NSF invests in major genetic project at Maine ocean lab

EAST BOOTHBAY, Maine (AP) — The National Science Foundation is providing $6 million to a Maine ocean science lab to help develop new genetic research technologies.

The money is going to Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, which says the new effort will launch next week with a goal of unlocking the genomic data of microscopic organisms that play a role in the world’s climate.

The principal investigator in the project is Bigelow’s Ramunas Stepanauskas, who is the director of the Single Cell Genomics Center at the lab. He says the effort will focus on connecting a recent “explosion of genomics data” to what’s happening in today’s environment.

Bigelow researchers will be working with co-investigators from the University of New Hampshire and Nevada-based Desert Research Institute.