Our laboratory focuses on malignant melanoma of the skin, a cancer that kills more than 10,000 Americans every year. Melanoma incidence has increased so much over the last century that whereas a US citizen in the 1930's had only a 1 in 1,500 chance of developing it, now almost 1 in 50 of us will be diagnosed with the disease. We are interested in the genetic and environmental factors that cause melanomas to develop so that we can design ways to reduce melanoma incidence.