Superfund Director gives talk on gene-environment interactions in human leukemia

Dr. Martyn T. Smith recently gave an invited talk at the Genetic Variation and Gene-Environment Interaction in Human Health and Disease symposium honoring 50 years since the discovery of the DNA structure and completion of the human genome. The meeting was held at NIH in Bethesda, Maryland on April 14-16, 2003. Dr. Smith's talk was on "Gene-environment interactions in human leukemia." A press conference was held after the meeting with journalists from Science, the New York Times, National Public Radio (NPR), Environmental Health Perspectives and others. Dr Smith's talk was highlighted on NPR with broadcasts of his remarks. Articles discussing the findings will follow shortly.
 
The human genome project to date has given us a good description of the genetic code of a single, pooled human being, but tells us little about genetic variation between people. The latter may be the basis for susceptibility to environmental exposures. The NIEHS-sponsored Environmental Genome Project is addressing this variation in environmentally-responsive genes. Superfund investigators and their collaborators have shown that variation in one of these genes, NQO1, is related to susceptibility to benzene toxicity and adult and infant leukemia.