Dr. Pardo Manuel de Villena, Professor and Chair, is the Lead PI on a new R01 award from NIEHS.
The project, titled “Genetic underpinning of diabetes associated with arsenic exposure” is based on the central hypothesis that multiple genes and haplotypes are tied to diabetic phenotypes associated with exposure to inorganic arsenic. Together with PIs Rebecca Fry, PhD (Environ Sciences and Engineering) and Mirek Styblo, PhD (Nutrition), the team will use the complementary resources of the Collaborative Cross (CC) and Diversity Outbred (DO) mouse populations to explore the following specific aims: 
Aim 1 – examine the range of inorganic arsenic metabolism and type 2 diabetes (T2D) in the DO population and use QTL mapping to identify the associated risk loci and driving haplotypes; Aim 2 – examine the mechanisms underlying inorganic arsenic metabolism and the T2D phenotypes in conjunction with sex and dose in the CC; and Aim 3 – translate the CC identified SNPs in an existing human cohort in which inorganic arsenic exposure was linked to T2D. By taking advantage of the power of the CC and DO strains, these studies will improve our understanding of the genetic basis for population differences in susceptibility to T2D related to inorganic arsenic exposure.