Drug developers join NIH hunt for SNPs

Pfizer and Affymetrix are donating millions of dollars in cash and resources to support the NIH's work in studying the genetic causes of diseases. The public/private consortium is called the Genetic Association Information Network. It will look for genetic variations that put people at risk of disease and the environmental factors--such as pollution--that can trigger the ailment. The network will compare the DNA of a thousand healthy people with a thousand sick people, looking for the single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that play a role in disease development.

- read this AP report