Scientists from Affymetrix Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., have been awarded a grant worth $10.2 million from the National Human Genome Research Institute of Bethesda, Md. The company will focus on mapping and characterizing the human genome regions that are transcribed into RNA, in collaboration with six other laboratories, including the University of Geneva in Switzerland and the Genome Institute of Singapore. The award is part of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements project, which involves 16 multinational research centers and totals more than $80 million. The goals of the project are to identify the functional regions of the human genome and to develop high-throughput technologies to assist with the identification.