Rady Children's Hospital is launching an effort to find out the underlying causes of birth defects like cleft palate and certain heart deformities.
In the next year, they'll aim to sequence the genomes of about 200 San Diego newborns with birth defects of unknown cause. The goal is to pinpoint the genes or environmental factors driving these abnormalities.
Some of the parents who consent to the sequencing will also have their genomes analyzed to understand how defects might be inherited.
The project will be led by UC San Diego pediatrics professor Christina Chambers.
"Even though they're pretty common, for most of them we really don't know what the cause is," Chambers said
Pojects like this are now possible because of the declining cost and amount of time required to sequence a genome, Chambers said.
This is the first effort announced by the Rady Pediatric Genomics and Systems Medicine Institute. It was formed last year with a $120 million donation from the family of Ernest Rady.
