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The School’s vast research efforts in alcoholism share the limelight with a prominent genomics display making national rounds. When a national touring exhibit on the human genome makes the Indiana State Museum its home for nearly four months starting in January, visitors will have an opportunity to explore the “instruction book of life” that is set down in our DNA. They’ll also have the chance to learn more about how IU scientists, especially those at the IU School of Medicine, are using the genome to create tomorrow’s health care. A Life Sciences Week of activities, including an open house for educators, workshops for students, and a new stand-alone exhibit, will help Hoosiers and other museum visitors understand how IU and IUSM scientists contribute to and use the flood of genomic information that has streamed from the completion of the 2000 Human Genome Project. All this activity is being prompted by the national traveling exhibit Genome, the Secret of How Life Works. The exhibit began at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and will make stops in Philadelphia, Tampa and Detroit before coming to Indianapolis Jan. 22 through May 8, 2005. The exhibit was created by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research, and underwritten by Pfizer Inc. “Once we learned that the Genome exhibit would be coming to Indianapolis, we knew this was a tremendous opportunity for the School to tell its story and capitalize on what will be a very strong exhibit at the State Museum,” says Pamela Su Perry, director of the Office of Public and Media Relations at the IU School of Medicine. Tomorrow’s Indiana As part of the program, a new Indiana University exhibit will appear in the Tomorrow’s Indiana section of the State Museum. Creating such a display – one that can be packed up and shown at science museums and other venues across the state – required an important initial decision: what should be the subject? After all, the domain of genomics, the activity of DNA, genes, proteins and their interactions with each other and the environment, has become pervasive in life sciences research. Yet for many lay people, the word genomics itself has little meaning. Complicating the decision was the fact that the primary audience for the display will be students, particularly middle school students – old enough to have received some initial education on these topics, but young enough that a research topic needed to be something they could relate to. IUSM scientists are doing exciting work in areas such as breast cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, but would the average fourteen-year-old visitor relate to these issues? With such factors in mind, a committee of IU researchers and communicators, along with members of the museum staff, debated a long list of topics and approaches, and finally selected alcoholism, an area of research in which IU has long been a leader. The relevance to young teens is clear. Excess alcohol consumption not only is a problem affecting nearly 14 million Americans, it directly affects the lives of many young people through their own or another household member’s behavior. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, in 2002 about 2 million youth ages twelve through twenty drank five or more drinks at one occasion, five or more times a month. Studies show that forty percent of those who start drinking before the age of fifteen meet criteria for alcohol dependence at some point in their lives. The Indiana Alcohol Research Center was created in 1987 and has been funded continuously by the NIAAA, a unit of NIH. Ting-Kai Li, MD, distinguished professor of medicine emeritus and former director of the Indiana Alcohol Research Center, now is director of the NIAAA. The Indiana center has produced a large amount of research on drinking behavior and the effects of heavy drinking. IU researchers have developed colonies of alcohol-preferring rats that have been invaluable in alcohol research. And IUSM scientists are taking leadership roles in research sponsored by COGA, a multi-center collaborative family study designed to find the genes that affect risk for alcoholism. The exhibit will provide some genome basics as well as discuss how genetic differences can affect alcohol metabolism and risk for alcoholism. The exhibit also will highlight information on the colonies of laboratory rats the IU researchers have developed for alcohol studies. There also will be a series of short videos about other IUSM research efforts where genomics plays an important role, including cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and pulmonary disease. While the exhibit was designed to be visually appealing to young people, it was important to ensure that it provides sound scientific information without encouraging alcohol use, says Lisa Townsend, executive director of IU Bloomington’s Office of Communications and Marketing. “We think we’ve reached a good balance with an exhibit that will accurately inform Hoosiers about IU research, and how our genes affect this important issue in our society,” Townsend says. To learn more about the exhibit, go to http://genome.pfizer.com. Eric Schoch is a science writer with the School’s Office of Public and Media Relations.
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