Toxicity gene hunt gets real with mega bucks!

There's some good news for all those curious to know about how their pets and their genes respond to the environment. Searching for genes, environmental toxicity markers, development of innovative testing and follow-up procedures is now being given serious attention.

NIH is creating four centers - each with $5 million in funding spread over five years - to study potential linkages between environmental factors and autism and children's development. Besides this the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has declared award of grants totaling $37 million to five research institutions. The focus of the study is to understand the ways genes and the environment interact to cause disease and neurological problems.

Recipients of the prestigious grants include researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) in Portland, Duke University in Durham, NC and MIT. Each institution will receive more than $7 million over five years and will focus on understanding how exposure to pesticides, metals, contaminants etc. affect development of the neurological system, cancer and behavior. The researchers will pool their findings in to huge publicly accessible database called Chemical Effects Biological Systems (CEBS) database.