Genomics in environmental health research--opportunities and challenges

Environmental health research impacts both environmental health regulatory policy and the practice of medicine. However, this area of medical research has not garnered public support and attention of medical researchers because of its emphasis on prevention and public health. Also, the pervasiveness of a scientific culture wedded to old problems and outdated technologies and models systems has not been helpful in generating enthusiasm for the field. While the emphasis on prevention is both laudable and appropriate, the adoption of cutting-edge technologies to exploit the new scientific opportunities, made possible by the nation's investment in genomics, is essential if the discipline expects to be competitive with other highly deserving programs. The new 'omics' era of environmental health research, ushered in over the past decade, characterized by the linkage of genomics, proteomics and metabolomics to conventional toxicology and pathology databases, holds great promise for elucidating mechanisms of gene-environment interaction in human health and disease. These combined approaches will allow one to monitor multiple molecular events, pathways and interactive networks simultaneously-a requirement for elucidating toxic mechanisms. But, before embracing the 'omics' technologies as the 'be all-end all;' they need to be validated for their predictive capacities in large-scale multi-institutional studies, such as those described in this article.