NIEHS launches the comparative mouse genomics centers consortium. (Extramurally Speaking ...).The NIEHS NIEHS National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIH, DHHS) has announced the establishment and funding of five academic research centers to develop and breed mice with key genetic variations similar to those of humans. These multidisciplinary, multiinstitutional centers will provide special mutant mice for use by scientists throughout the NIH "Not invented here." See digispeak. NIH - The United States National Institutes of Health. and for other research programs as well. NIEHS director Kenneth Olden old·en adj. Of, relating to, or belonging to time long past; old or ancient: olden days. [Middle English : old, old; see old + -en, adj. said, "Mice and humans have many similar genes, and by adding a gene, we can make mice even more similar in their susceptibility to human diseases. We can use these mouse models to understand human variabilities to environmental factors that may have a role in human diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, arthritis, and heart disease." Many cases of human disease can be triggered when a natural or man-made substance in the environment causes a genetic mutation or a disturbance in cell growth. Variations in a person's genes make the person more or less sensitive to these substances, or more or less able to resist or repair the damage. Modeling the human variations in the mouse by modifying the mice to add or subtract a humanlike gene with its variations will help scientists unlock the secrets of these and other human diseases in a genetically varied humankind. The selected NIEHS centers will sequence mouse genes and compare them to human genes and their sequences, produce mice with mutations or missing genes (knockout mice), and maintain breeding colonies to supply test rodents and breeding stock to other scientists. The NIEHS will spend up to $5 million per year for five years under cooperative agreements to create the centers and carry out the work. The NIEHS mouse centers will support and supplement a $21 million NIH-wide effort, announced 5 October 1999, to map the genes of the mouse via a Mouse Genome Sequencing Network. The effort by the NIEHS will emphasize finding a better understanding of the variations in the genes that make some individuals more sensitive than others to environmental exposures. The centers named by the NIEHS are: * The University of Texas, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas David Johnson, principal investigator * Albert Einstein College of Medicine
The Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM) is a graduate school of Yeshiva University. It is a private medical school located in the Jack and Pearl Resnick Campus of Yeshiva University in the Morris Park of Yeshiva University, Bronx, New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Raju Kucherlapati, principal investigator * University of Washington, Seattle, Washington Warren Ladiges, principal investigator * University of Cincinnati The University of Cincinnati is a coeducational public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio. Ranked as one of America’s top 25 public research universities and in the top 50 of all American research universities,[2] , Cincinnati, Ohio Peter Stambrook, principal investigator * The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio UTHSCSA is the largest comprehensive health sciences university in South Texas. Located in the South Texas Medical Center, it serves San Antonio and all of the 50,000 square mile (130,000 km²) area of central and south Texas. , San Antonio, Texas “San Antonio” redirects here. For other uses, see San Antonio (disambiguation). San Antonio is the second most populous city in Texas, the third most populous metropolitan area in Texas, and is the seventh most populous city in the United States. As of the 2006 U.S. Jan Vijg, principal investigator Program contact: Jose Velazquez, e-mail: velazqul@niehs.nih.gov. |
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