Natural Selection, Inc.^® Wins Phase I SBIR from the National Science Foundation: 6-month Effort to Develop Machine Learing Tools for fRNA Gene Detection.

La Jolla, CA -- Natural Selection, Inc.^® has been awarded a 6-month grant for approximately $100,000 from the National Science Foundation to research and develop the use of evolutionary computation to adapt neural network architectures for the reliable and accurate prediction of functional RNA (fRNA) genes. The effort, funded under a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant, seeks to extend and improve previous methods that have been used with prior success for fRNA gene discovery in prokaryotes."Our background in applying evolved neural networks for pattern recognition over a wide variety of biomedical problems will play a key role in the success of this effort," said Dr. Gary Fogel, Vice President of Natural Selection, Inc.^® and principal investigator on the SBIR. He continued, "A bioinformatics approach to fRNA gene discovery in eukaryotes will be useful not only to increase the understanding of small interfering RNAs (siRNA) but RNA interference (RNAi) in general. A successful tool in this area will help provide a true estimation of the diversity of these important regulatory elements and their structure and function. We are actively pursuing several avenues to ensure the broadest possible successful commercialization of this technology," said Dr. Fogel.

Natural Selection, Inc.^® was founded in 1993 to address complex problems in industry, medicine, and defense. The company possesses unique expertise in computational intelligence techniques, including evolutionary computation, neural networks, and fuzzy logic. The corporation's research efforts support the discovery of new pharmaceuticals, the automated detection and diagnosis of breast cancer from film-screen mammograms, optical character recognition, and a variety of military and industrial projects.

For more information, please contact:

Dr. David B. Fogel
Chief Executive Officer
Natural Selection, Inc.
3333 N. Torrey Pines Ct.
Suite 200
La Jolla, CA, 92037
tel: (858) 455-6449
fax: (858) 455-1560
dfogel@natural-selection.com