The resource was formally established in 2000 as the Vanderbilt Microarray Shared Resource (VMSR), and began by offering limited services based principally on spotted cDNA microarrays and a handful of Affymetrix products. Due to strong interest among Vanderbilt faculty, the VMSR grew quickly, both in terms of its user base and the menu of services it offered, and has been in a constant state of evolution to ensure that members of the Vanderbilt community-and beyond-have access to the most contemporary and powerful technologies in this area.
In January 2010, the resource was renamed the Functional Genomics Shared Resource (FGSR). In November 2010, the Genome Sciences Resource was formed, joining the FGSR with Sanger Sequencing and Next Generation DNA Sequencing cores.