The U.S. National Science Foundation is an independent federal agency that supports science and engineering in all 50 states and U.S. territories. NSF was established in 1950 by Congress to promote the progress of science, advance the national health, prosperity and welfare, and secure the national defense.
The Enabling Discovery through GEnomics (EDGE) program, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes for Health (NIH), aims to advance understanding in comparative and functional genomics. It focuses on developing innovative tools, technologies, resources, and infrastructure to enhance biological research. Specifically, the program emphasizes identifying causal mechanisms linking genes to phenotypes and conducting functional genomic research to understand the mechanistic basis of complex traits within various contexts. These efforts align with broader scientific goals, such as predicting phenotypes to understand the rules underlying genomes-to-phenomes relationships and establishing the roles of genes and regulatory elements in biological pathways and networks.