HANOVER, N.H. — Scientists at the Dartmouth College Medical School will use an $11 million grant to work with their colleagues throughout northern New England to study the way genetics and the environment work together to trigger and prevent disease.

The grant from the National Institutes of health will help Dartmouth establish a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence.

The center will recruit and train young biologists who will do the research into the interaction between genes and the environment in causing or preventing diseases.

Dartmouth Medical School scientists will work with colleagues from the universities of New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine and Southern Maine, Harvard University’s national center for biomedical computing, Maine’s Jackson Labs and Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory and the Maine Medical Center.