Funding, News and Announcements

The Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) has announced a request for applications (RFA) for Whole-Genome Analysis for Autism Risk Variants funding.

Grants awarded through this RFA are intended to advance understanding of the genetic basis of autism and, in particular, to begin to assess genetic variants conferring risk in non-coding regions and in coding regions of the genome that may be less accessible to whole-exome sequencing.

Data to be analyzed under this RFA will come from whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of 500 quartet families (2,000 genomes at 30X sequence coverage) from the Simons Simplex Collection (SSC). The New York Genome Center (NYGC) will perform the sequencing and will make the alignment and variant call data available following standard quality control and data processing steps. The first batch of data is expected to be available in October 2015 and 90 percent of the data will be available by January 2016. Data will be available without delay to all eligible researchers (i.e., availability is not contingent on funding through this RFA).

Investigators who are interested in developing innovative and efficient ways to analyze the WGS data from these 500 SSC families are encouraged to submit proposals in response to this RFA. The grant period is for no more than 18 months. The maximum budget is US$250,000, including indirect costs.

Any investigators who intend to submit a proposal are required to send an email by 28 July 2015 with the intended investigators’ names and affiliations, and the intended proposal’s title, to grants@simonsfoundation.org with the subject line: SFARI WGA RFA Notice of Intent. Please copy the International Research Facilitator.

The deadline for full proposal submission is August 14, 2015, 5:00 p.m. EDT.

Please visit the SFARI website for more information and links to the guidelines and application form.