ALTERATION OF GENE REGULATION BY ENVIRONMENTAL COMPOUNDS

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Xavier University of Louisiana will lead a collaborative program project comprised of investigators from Xavier and Tulane Universities. The goal of this program is to increase the participation of investigators at Xavier University in competitive environmental health sciences research funded by the NIEHS in particular and the NIH in general. Toward that end, the specific aims for this ARCH grant are four-fold: (1) To establish a multi- disciplinary research collaboration among scientists at Xavier and Tulane to build and sustain an increased capacity for environmental health sciences research. Two Research and four Pilot Projects will study the effects of environmental compounds on the regulation of transcription by nuclear steroid hormone receptors, the rearrangement and mutation of human DNA, and metallothionein. Each project comprises a collaboration among investigators from each institution. (2) To assemble and conduct a formal course on grantsmanship for faculty. The objective of this semester-long course will be for each participant to create, edit, and submit a research proposal to a competitive mainstream program in the NIEHS or NIH. Completion of this grant writing course will be mandatory for Xavier investigations who receive ARCH funding. (3) To establish core facilities at Xavier to support current and future research programs in the environmental health sciences. Three core facilities to be established are (i) a tissue culture laboratory, (ii) an environmental molecular biology laboratory, and (iii) a molecular interaction laboratory. (4) To recruit and hire a new faculty member who will be competitive in obtaining extramural mainstream NIEHS or NIH support. The ARCH program will build upon the established, decade-old cooperative relationship between Xavier and Tulane in environmental research to strengthen a vigorous partnership at the faculty level. It is anticipated that the mentoring and instruction provided specifically by the ARCH program will provide the infrastructure necessary for Xavier faculty to prepare and submit competitive grant proposals to achieve independence from the ARCH program.