14 DAY TRIAL // A team of investigators from the Indiana University has just been awarded a five-year grant to study how environmental factors cause changes in our genetic material, via mutations and natural selection.
The grant was awarded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and will amount to $2.27 million over the study period. Researcher Joseph Shaw is the main recipient.
Through the Outstanding New Environmental Scientist (ONES) program, the NIEHS plans to support innovative research in understanding how environmental exposures impacts human health.
The main way this is done is by searching and supporting talented and creative scientists, and by investing in promising work that may yield interesting findings.
Fortunately, at this point, studies of environmental sciences are beginning to incorporate advances in numerous other fields of research, such as for example molecular toxicology, computational sciences and information technology.
All of these approaches are meant to determine how is it that certain factors in the environment can influence our genes to such an extent that they modify the risk level we have of developing certain diseases.
Shaw is the first expert at the university to be recognized through this program. He holds an appointment as an assistant professor in the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs.
He will be conducting studies on one of a handful of model organisms approved by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for biomedical research, the water flea (Daphnia).
In this lake and pond dwelling crustacean, the scientist will attempt to examine gene copy number variation (CNV).
Recent investigations have shown that most of the genetic differences that the individuals of a certain species exhibit are caused when genes are duplicated or deleted from inside the genome.
The same naturally holds true for humans as well, and Shaw will seek to determine how, this happens, why, and what the main implications are.
“We have identified natural populations that have experienced substantial environmental stress for over a century,” Shaw explains.
“The studies will now assess how some populations have adapted to cope with chemical changes to the environment, or have been harmed by effects linked to changes in the number of gene copies,” he adds.
“Answers to these questions have profound implications for the long-term health of human populations that are living longer and doing so in the presence of a greater diversity of chemicals in our water that can modify DNA,” he concludes.