TaRGET II: Environmental Epigenomics Data Coordination Center (U24)

The summary for the TaRGET II: Environmental Epigenomics Data Coordination Center (U24) grant is detailed below. This summary states who is eligible for the grant, how much grant money will be awarded, current and past deadlines, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) numbers, and a sampling of similar government grants. Verify the accuracy of the data FederalGrants.com provides by visiting the webpage noted in the Link to Full Announcement section or by contacting the appropriate person listed as the Grant Announcement Contact. If any section is incomplete, please visit the website for the National Institutes of Health, which is the U.S. government agency offering this grant.

TaRGET II: Environmental Epigenomics Data Coordination Center (U24): Environmental exposure induced perturbations of epigenomic marks have been correlated with multiple aspects of disease pathogenesis.In 2012, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences established the multi-phased Toxicant Exposures and Responses by Genomic and Epigenomic Regulators of Transcription (TaRGET) Program to further address the role of the environment in disease susceptibility as a function of changes to the epigenome.The first phase of this program, TaRGET I (RFA-ES-12-008 TaRGET I: Chromatin Structure, Genomics, and Transcriptional Responses to the Environment) solicited and funded applications pursuing research objectives aimed at understanding environmental influences on epigenetic mechanisms and transcriptional regulation. These grants consider the impact of environmental toxicants on the following processes: nucleosome positioning, chromatin accessibility, chromatin remodeling and the role of non-coding RNAs. The NIEHS has also awarded a number of unsolicited grants in the past two years with specific aims that are compatible with the stated goals of the TaRGET I FOA using a variety of model systems.However, identifying changes in epigenomic marks, (DNA methylation, histone modifications, chromatin accessibility) in tissues/cells affected by disease relevant environmental exposures as a research strategy is not always feasible in humans. The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to establish The TaRGET Data Coordination Center to participate in the TaRGET II Consortium (T2C) which will assess the utility of surrogate tissue epigenomic analysis as a means to examine the role of environmental exposures on epigenomic marks. The role of the TaRGET DCC will be to collect, store, curate, and display all data, metadata, and analysis tools generated by members of the T2C. This FOA is published in parallel with a companion FOA, RFA-ES-15-001 "TaRGET II: Environmental Epigenomic Analysis in Tissue Surrogates (U01)". Projects funded by these FOAs will collectively form the TaRGET II Consortium (T2C) and will develop a publically accessible database that provides data to the broader scientific community on the conservation of environmental exposure induced epigenomic changes in target tissues and cells and selected surrogates. The T2C will be charged with establishing models that can predict and understand exposures/conditions that will be informative. These models will be developed by the research projects supported by awards from the companion RFA (RFA-ES-15-001, U01, TaRGET II: Environmental Epigenomic Analysis in Tissue Surrogates).