fold, making such a comprehensive effort affordable," Zerhouni added. Congress still must approve funding for the project, proposed by President George W. Bush in this week's budget request. The second project is called the Genetic Association Information Network, in which NIH labs will team with drug giant Pfizer and Affymetrix, a biotech company specializing in "gene chips" and other genetic tools. Both projects will look for tiny, one-letter differences in the genetic code, called single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, which can alter a gene enough to make a person either susceptible or resistant to a disease. "We need better tools to evaluate environmental exposures, dietary intake, and activity levels and then determine how those risk factors interact with specific genotypes to either maintain health or lead to disease," said Dr. David Schwartz, Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at NIH. "Without these more precise measures of exposure, it will be very difficult to figure out why certain people develop disease and others don't," Schwartz added. --SP 22 09 Local Time 19 09 GMT
