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The mission of the MIT Center for Environmental Health Sciences (CEHS) is to take a leadership role in facilitating and promoting research into biological effects of exposure to environmental agents in order to understand and predict how such exposures affect human health. Three fundamental components influence the health effects of environmental exposures: the nature of the exposure itself, the duration of the exposure, and how well the exposed organism is equipped to deal with the exposure. In other words, the organism's genetic susceptibility. These are the broad-brush strokes of what Environmental Health Sciences research is all about.
Students interested in participating in our program should contact the faculty members directly. Although a formal proposal does not need to be submitted until a project has been agreed upon, students seeking to work with a CEHS faculty member should have an aim in mind and be able to discuss and explain how working in this field would enrich not only the student's educational goals, but also those of the research environment.
All individuals working in the laboratory environment are required to read the applicable Safety and Chemical Hygiene Plan. Additionally, they may also be required to complete a program in Radiation Protection. The CEHS safety representative, Ms. Emma Wang, will arrange specific safety training according to the laboratory program specifics.
The CEHS has three major research areas in the form of Research Cores: (i) Mutation and Cancer; (ii) Bioengineering for Toxicology; (iii) Environmental Health Systems.
The Mutation and Cancer Research Core
The Mutation and Cancer Research Core, directed by Professor Peter Dedon, builds upon the historical strength of the Center. Collectively this research core addresses how exposure to DNA damaging agents affect the health of cells, tissues, animals, people, and populations. In particular, how these agents cause cancer and contribute to other diseases associated with the aging process. The damaging agents include reactive oxygen and nitrogen species, alkylating agents, and radiation (all ubiquitous in our environment). The tools used include x-ray crystallography, state-of-the-art mass spectrometry, organic chemistry and biochemistry, bacterial and yeast model organisms, cultured mammalian cells, mathematical modeling of signal transduction pathways, RNAi manipulation of gene expression, transgenic and knock-out mouse model systems, genetic polymorphism detection in human populations, transcriptional profiling, functional genomics and the accompanying bioinformatics required to analyze the data. The goals are to determine the molecular details of how exposures to environmental agents cause detrimental health affects and, perhaps more importantly, to determine the molecular details of how cells, tissues, animals and people ameliorate these detrimental effects.
The Bioengineering for Toxicology Research Core
The Bioengineering for Toxicology Research Core, directed by Professor Linda Griffith, represents an exciting new direction for the CEHS that will bring many of the strengths of the Biological Engineering Department and the emerging Computational and Systems Biology Initiative (CSBi) into the Center. The approaches that will be adopted here include the following: using engineered tissues (such as liver and bone marrow) to monitor and dissect biological responses to toxic environmental agents; linking systematic experiments to quantitative models of cellular responses to damaging agents (the CSBi paradigm as shown in the adjacent figure); developing genomic and proteomic approaches for these systematic measurements; applying state-of-the-art mechanical engineering to devise new ways of monitoring biological events and single molecule biochemical events. Collaborations between members of this Research Core are already well established. For instance the Griffith lab collaborates with a number of other labs (Samson, Tannenbaum, and Essigmann) to apply transcriptional profiling and proteomics to analyze the response of engineered liver tissue to environmental toxicants. One goal is to determine how closely the response of engineered tissues recapitulates the response of that tissue in an animal. Ultimately one could imagine using engineered tissues instead of animals to determine whether environmental agents present a health hazard. The Lauffenburger, Tannenbaum, Tidor, and Yaffe labs already collaborate to systematically study and mathematically model apoptosis at the systems biology level. This approach will be extended to studying apoptosis induced by environmental toxicants. Professors Peter So and Bevin Engelward have collaborated to use two-photon microscopy for monitoring chromosomal damage as it happens in vivo. Professors Peter Dedon and Peter So have developed methods to monitor biophysical events on single DNA molecules as these molecules are acted upon by various enzymes relevant to the environmental health sciences.
The Environmental Health Systems Research Core
The Environmental Health Systems Research Core, directed by Professor David Schauer, is to understand, holistically, the relationships that link ecological processes and human health. This includes the traditional "fate and transport" model (in which chemical releases are transported and modulated by processes in the ecosystem, thus governing the extent of human exposure to the chemicals). However, advances over the past decade mandate a broader view of environmental-health linkages, in which genomics and ecology play an increasingly prominent and important role. Future advances require better understanding of evolution, gene flow, and ecosystem processes along with progress in chemical and physical modeling and measurement. Gene flow, for example, can affect the distribution of pathogenicity or the acquisition of antibiotic resistance or bio-degradative capability in microbial communities. Ecosystem processes govern the nature of coexisting populations at scales from that of the gut to that of continents with direct effects on humans at all scales. Examples of projects ongoing in this Core include: the environmental geochemistry of toxic metals, population dynamics of pathogenic and non-pathogenic Vibrio species in natural waters, the ecology of the lower gut and how that influences cancer susceptibility, the ecology and evolution of microorganisms in nature, and studies on arsenic in drinking water in Bangladesh (a result of a tradeoff between chemical toxins and environmentally transported pathogens). We envision that this Research Core will ultimately represent a bridge from the Systems Biology approach to the Earth System approach in addressing questions related to the effects of environment on human health.
CEHS
MEMBERS:
The links
on faculty
names below,
will bring
you to their
web sites,
which describe
their research
interests
and provide
contact
information.
Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia
Prof.
Peter Dedon
Prof.
Catherine Drennan
Prof.
Bevin Engelward
Prof.
John
M. Essigmann
Prof.
James
G. Fox
Prof. Ernest Fraenkel
Prof.
Linda
Griffith
Prof. Jongyoon Han
Prof.
Charles
Harvey
Prof.
Harold
Hemond
Prof. David Hunter - Harvard
Prof.
Douglas Lauffenburger
Prof. Scott Manalis
Prof. Jacquin Niles
Prof.
Martin
Polz
Prof.
Leona Samson
Prof.
Ram Sasisekharan
Prof.
David Schauer
Prof.
Peter So
Prof.
Steven
Tannenbaum
Prof.
Bruce
Tidor
Prof.
Graham Walker
Prof.
Forest White
Prof.
John (Pete) Wishnok
Prof.
Gerald Wogan
Prof.
Michael Yaffe
Prof.
Jacquelyn Yanch
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