PROJECT SUMMARY The Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) is one of seven such National Primate Research Centers (NPRCs) that are sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. ONPRC is tasked to conduct scientific discovery in order to help the public live healthier, longer lives. Facilitating this process, support for ONPRC comes through the P51 Core Grant (P51-OD011092), which provides expertise, technology, and various Core- based resources. This infrastructure at ONPRC provides access to nonhuman primates (ca. 5,000 individuals), enabling a highly translational model for cutting-edge biomedical research. The genetics department at ONPRC is one of several specialized resources and they help facilitate and maintain the outbred resource locally and in coordination with the other NPRCs. Moreover, to better define individuals and their genotypic variation (for example, single nucleotide polymorphisms; SNP) the genetics staff has been performing DNAseq and compiling this information. Moreover, ONPRC is hosting similar information from other NPRCs and this data is available in an on-line format. However, due to cost and time-constraints, not to mention the large number of animals here and other NPRCs, the choice of animals to have their DNA sequenced is restrictive. Therefore, it is extremely helpful that the NIA is providing support via this project, to sequence the DNA from animals in the Primate Aging Study. This effort is interesting in other respects, such as an extended impact of having data from animals that may be well-represented in off-spring currently in the colony, which were produced over the reproductive lifespan of these individuals.

PROJECT NARRATIVE Understanding the genetic underpinnings for rhesus macaques will lead to the discovery of polymorphisms that cause phenotypic variation, including some disease processes. The process of applying DNAseq in this species is well-established, with local expertise representing the cutting edge in this field. Therefore, this research should be conducted here on aged animals to add another facet to the expanding database in this species.