A technician processes COVID tests
A technician processes COVID tests.

The news has been filled with stories on the new variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute is leading an effort in Central California to sequence the virus and make information available about the strains present in California to the broader scientific and health community.

This information is vital to ensuring an informed response to the ongoing pandemic—and now you can help. To get this effort to the finish line, the Helen and Will Webster Foundation has pledged a dollar-for-dollar match up to $200,000 for any new gifts received.

Thanks to UCSC’s pioneering work in genomics, the campus is uniquely positioned to contribute to this worldwide effort. That early work, dating back to 2000, when UC Santa Cruz joined other members of the International Human Genome Project consortium to complete the first working draft of the human genome and published it openly, gave birth to the UCSC Genome Browser, which includes the SASR-CoV-2 genome browser–the world’s most comprehensive, publicly available and unrestricted tracking system for new strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and biological information about them.

The Genomics Institute’s goal is to expand this important work by sequencing and analyzing the virus genomes from positive COVID-19 tests, and share this information openly. The total cost of this urgent initiative is just over $1.4 million, of which $1.1 million has already been raised thanks to a number of generous donors.

Virus sequencing can also be used to determine how the virus was transmitted between people, i.e., who gave it to whom, a new and much more accurate form of what is commonly referred to as contact tracing. It is expected that as more people get vaccinated, the virus will evolve further to evade the vaccination, and a new version will start to reinfect people. Hopefully the next strain of SARS-CoV-2 will be milder, but we need to be ready for anything. Thanks to the efforts of the UCSC team, and with further support, we will be.

Please join us in this effort and make a gift. We are at a turning point in this pandemic, and your gift will make a tangible impact on efforts to defeat the virus. And with this important pledge from the Webster Foundation, you will be able to amplify your individual support of the pathbreaking work being done at UCSC.

Make your gift here.