Life Sciences Division
Oak Ridge National Laboratory

On December 3, 1998, ORNL signed a memorandum of cooperation with a number of the state’s medical institutions. The memorandum, called Tennessee Mouse Consortium for Functional Genomics, is designed to help medical researchers collaborate in applying ORNL’s mouse colony resources to their studies. Participants with ORNL in the venture are the University of Tennessee (Knoxville and Memphis), Meharry Medical College, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The signing was part of a conference in Knoxville, "The Impact of Emerging Technologies on Health Care in the 21^st Century," that included a presentation by Life Sciences Division’s Dabney Johnson and featured Tennessee Senator Bill Frist as the keynote speaker. LSD’s Barry Berven, who also serves as director of the UT-ORNL Joint Institute for Biological Sciences, says that increased research collaboration throughout the state, using the mutations in the Lab’s mouse colony, could bring important findings in genetic medical research. (Contact: Barry Berven, baz@ornl.gov, 423-576-2083; Funding Source: Internal; KP)