NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The National Institutes of Health today said it is awarding $348 million for bold research, visionary scientists, and aggressive young researchers through the 2009 NIH Director's High-Risk Research Awards program.

Richard W. Roberts, Ph.D. University of Southern California, and Hyongsok (Tom) Soh, Ph.D. University of California, Santa Barbara, are two of the 115 researchers recognized by the NIH for their project titled "Polypeptide Design with Proteomic Scope via Microfluidic mRNA Display".

In this project, the investigators propose to combine mRNA display (a protein design/evolution method) and high efficiency microfluidic sorting to create a new technology-microfluidic mRNA display-for the purpose of enabling design of peptides and proteins that can be used as protein capture reagents. They will develop and apply this powerful new technology toward creating a comprehensive reagent set aimed at the Hepatitis C virus (HCV) proteome. Applying high-throughput approaches to create new protein capture reagents has the potential to speed the pace of proteomics research.