The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute has awarded the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation a grant to expand an existing study into sarcoidosis.
With the new funding, OMRF scientist Courtney Montgomery will sequence the entire genomes of 615 African Americans to look for genetic markers, or predictors, of the disease.
By examining the entire human genome, Montgomery said, scientists will be able to assemble a comprehensive picture of genetic variation. “Even though we are all human and share a huge amount of our DNA, we all have something a little bit different. So when we can look at every single piece of DNA in a group of sarcoidosis patients and compare it to every piece of DNA from a group of healthy people, then we can better understand what is causing that disease.”
The funding for this study comes from grant No. R01 HL113326-04 from the NHLBI, part of the National Institutes of Health.
