Nuclear Receptor Signaling Atlas (NURSA) Hub Open Competition for NURSA Data Source Projects (NDSP)

The mission of the Nuclear Receptor Signaling Atlas (NURSA) is to accrue, develop, and communicate information advancing our understanding of the integral role of nuclear receptor signaling in physiology and metabolic diseases, including diabetes, obesity, and reproductive diseases and disorders. Currently, the central core of NURSA is a Hub that provides the integration and cohesion needed to aggregate, annotate, and present state-of-the-art data in a user friendly fashion. A web portal, www.nursa.org, interfaces with the broader scientific community. To achieve its goals, the NURSA Informatics Hub solicits Project applications to support innovative research to the Hub. Successful PIs will leverage their individual and collaborative resources to address the scientific goals of this Request for Applications. Three previous similar announcements resulted in 11 NURSA-funded projects that support high quality cross-cutting research. The NR community has generated a large number of omics-scale datasets that collectively document functional endpoints of NR signaling pathways throughout the body. Despite their potential in elucidating NR signaling in health and disease, these datasets have yet to be leveraged to their full potential.  Accordingly, the NURSA Hub has invested considerable effort in aggregating, annotating, curating, and processing these datasets to enhance their use. The full current list of datasets can be browsed on the NURSA Dataset home page, or the resource’s 40,000,000+ data points can be mined via Transcriptomine. To fully capitalize on this significant investment of knowledge and expertise, this NDSP announcement solicits applications based on the following goals:(1)Extend Transcriptomine by building new visualization and analysis tools. (2) Leverage the Transcriptomine API to build web applications that will reach research communities beyond the nuclear receptor field. (3) Improve the scope of Transcriptomine through biocuration of complementary ‘omics-scale datasets. Successful applications will have a substantial informatics focus and relevance to the physiology and/or pathophysiology of metabolic disease. Unlike previous solicitations, and recognizing integrative cross-talk between different signaling paradigms, applications need not themselves relate specifically to nuclear receptor signaling. Where appropriate, applicants are encouraged to use the Transcriptomine application programming interface (API). Applications that propose active collaboration with the NURSA Informatics Hub are particularly welcome, and discussions with the NURSA Project Scientist Dr. Corinne Silva (silvacm@niddk.nih.gov) or the NURSA Project Leader Dr. Neil McKenna (nmckenna@bcm.edu) prior to submission of proposals are strongly encouraged. Deadline for letter of intent: November 7, 2016.