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A new, $47 million home for the New York Genome Center, on the corner of Grand and Sixth Avenue is expected to be a game changer.

Nancy Kelley, the founding executive director of the nearly two year old organization, says the seven floor, 168,000 square foot facility will create more than 500 jobs and transform science and healthcare in New York and beyond.

"What we hope to build is the largest genomic sequencing, bioinformatics and data storage facility in the world for human genetic data. What that will mean is both new approaches in terms of research to discovering new diagnostics and treatments for disease, but also applying them in the clinic," explains Kelley.

Currently operating out of a pilot lab inside Rockefeller University on the Upper East Side, the New York Genome Center is an independent, not-for-profit organization supported by Rockefeller and 10 other big name institutions including Columbia and Mount Sinai Medical Center.

"By pooling their resources they can make sure that the capital investment is constantly being made to keep the new technology on the latest," Kelley says. "The mapping of the human genome project ended in 2003 and cost $3 billion. Today you can sequence it, the whole human genome of an individual in about two weeks for less than $5,000."

"Each human genome is basically 100 billion base pairs, small nucleic acids. This machine has the power to do six of those within a 12 day span," says Kevin Shianna, Senior Vice President of Sequencing Operations.

The New York Genome Center's new home will be open in April of 2013.