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For more information about this archival news release, please contact Robin Mackar (http://www.niehs.nih.gov/news/media/index.cfm), News Director, Office of Communications & Public Liaison (http://www.niehs.nih.gov/about/od/ocpl/index.cfm) at (919) 541-0073 or by email at rmackar@niehs.nih.gov.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
March 20, 2003
#03-01

NIEHS CONTACT:
Bill Grigg
(301) 402-3378

20 Mar 2003: Meeting: Gene-Environment Interaction in Health and Disease

In April, as the world marks the 50th anniversary of Watson and Crick's Nobel Prize-winning description of the DNA double helix, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences will look beyond the historic sequencing of the human genome to new and future studies of how variations in our genes can interact with the environment to cause disease.

In cooperation with the National Human Genome Research Institute and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism , the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences will host a half-day public symposium beginning at 8:30 a.m. April 16 in the Masur Auditorium of the Clinical Center (Building 10) NIH, Bethesda, Md., on Genetic Variation and Gene-Environment Interaction in Human Health and Disease. The meeting will provide opportunities for an in-depth consideration of DNA variations that can interact with environmental triggers to cause disease.

Although we all have the same genes, individual genes vary slightly in each of us, making some of us far more susceptible to environmental insults and chemicals than others are. Some smokers get lung cancer, for example, while others do not.

Talks on DNA variation in gene-environment interaction research and its implications to human disease will be presented. NIEHS Deputy Director Samuel Wilson, M.D., Ph.D., and Lisa Brooks, Ph.D., Program Director, Genetic Variation and Genome Information for NHGRI, will chair the symposium.

For more information contact David Brown, NIEHS, (919) 541-5111.

8:30-8:40	Welcome and Introduction Samuel Wilson, NIEHS, NIH
Session I	CHAIR: Lisa Brooks, NHGRI, NIH
8:40-9:10	Patterns of Human Genetic Variation Lynn Jorde, University of Utah
9:10-9:40	SNPing in the Human Genome Debbie Nickerson, University of Washington
9:40-10:10	Influence of DNA Variation on Gene Expression Jeff Trent, Translational Genomics Research Institute
10:10-10:40	Relating Variation to Phenotype Charles Rotimi, Howard University
10:40-10:50	BREAK
Session II	CHAIR: Samuel Wilson, NIEHS, NIH
10:50-11:20	Functional Genomics of Paraoxonase (PON1) Polymorphisms Clement Furlong, University of Washington
11:20-11:50	Gene-Environment Interaction Related to Alcohol Use and Its Consequences David Crabb, Indiana University
11:50-12:20	Gene-Environment Interactions in BRCA Related Breast Cancer Mary-Claire King, University of Washington
12:20- 12:50	Gene-Environment Interactions in Human Leukemia Martyn Smith, University of California at Berkeley
12:50-1:30	Audience Participation and Discussion