Since its inception in 2010, the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium (IMPC) has created a distributed infrastructure for the analysis of the mouse genome, allying major centres worldwide to leverage an extraordinary breadth of expertise in mouse genetics.
generating a complete catalogue of mammalian gene function
We began with the goal of generating a complete catalogue of mammalian gene function by systematically knocking out and undertaking phenotyping tests for every gene in the mouse genome. As of 2018, we have completed 8000 genes, more than a third of the mouse coding genome. Our website also contains over 74 million data points and over 400,000 images. The impact of our work is reflected in not only a number of high profile publications appearing in Nature, Nature Genetics and Nature Communications over the past 2 years, but in over 2000 publications (as of January 2019) that relate to the IMPC.
The year 2020 will mark our 10 year anniversary as a research consortium, and whilst we will be reflecting on our fantastic achievements to date – we have been thinking hard about what the next 10 years will bring for the IMPC.
the key goal of the IMPC for 2021-20130 is to deliver broad-based genomic insights into the function of human genetic variation
Leaders from mouse genetics centres across the globe have come together to produce our strategy for 2021-2030, in which we outline our aims for the future. The IMPC’s 10-year strategy presents a bold ambition for the future functional annotation of the genome and deciphering genetic variation in the context of gene function and disease. The key goal of the IMPC for 2021-2030 is to deliver broad-based genomic insights into the function of human genetic variation in both coding and non-coding sequences that underpins future developments in precision medicine, rare-disease, clinical genetics and healthy living.
The challenge we face is to rapidly and definitively establish causality of both coding and non-coding variants in the genome and determine the functional role of these variants in normal and disease-related development. Building on our success to date, the IMPC is in a position of strength to overcome this challenge and the profound difficulties in determining the functional role of human genetic variation.
We have set ourselves an ambitious but achievable strategy
To deliver our mission, we are partnering with major human genetics consortia across the globe to help us inform our strategy, prioritise the generation of relevant mutants and ultimately, to meet our outlined targets.
We have set ourselves an ambitious but achievable strategy – to engage the expertise and facilities of the IMPC in developing large-scale analyses of both coding and non-coding sequence variation. Over the coming years, the IMPC will generate new knowledge on the mammalian genome, in particular the function of human genetic variation, that will have a transformative impact on clinical diagnosis and management, preventative and therapeutic development, precision medicine, and healthcare delivery.
Website and Outreach
As we make progress towards achieving our goals in the coming years, we wanted a website to reflect our status as an influential international research consortium, and we are happy to have recently launched our new, redesigned website.
After working with an independent web design company based in the UK, along with extensive internal development, we have a result that we are really proud of, and that provides a great user experience, improved features, refined navigation and a refreshed look and feel, whilst still providing the same high-quality data.
As part of the website redesign process, we have produced new IMPC branding guidelines which can be seen on our updated display stand, which we will continue to show off at the biggest genetics conferences around the globe.
We have already made a considerable impact on knowledge of gene function across many disease areas and our understanding of the mammalian genome landscape. We are looking forward to continuing to make strides in mammalian genetics over the coming years and support our funders’ goals to prevent, detect, diagnose and treat disease. A PDF version of our strategy document can be found below.