It has been suggested that it may be appropriate to reduce the yields of metals in smoke (Burns et al. 2008). Consequently, ATC is investigating gene expression in tobacco exposed to heavy metals to understand the potential for reducing metal sequestration in leaves. In contrast, the majority of work published on metal sequestration in tobacco sees the hyperaccumulating characteristics of tobacco as useful traits in bioremediation. The maintenance of a healthy plant requires metals such as manganese and copper. Therefore it is necessary to modify only the accumulation and transportation pathways specific to those metals we wish to exclude from the leaf. With the availability of the recently created custom AffymetrixTM tobacco chip at ATC we are now able to look for specific genes with altered levels of expression in various tissues of the plant in response to particular metals. Three varieties of tobacco were grown in greenhouse conditions using a semi-hydroponic system. Cadmium, selenium, copper or zinc salts were added into the medium surrounding the roots. Leaf and root material were harvested and RNA isolation performed. cRNA was produced and hybridized to the ATC custom AffymetrixTM tobacco chip. The analysis of expression has been divided into experiments, the first of which looks specifically at the Virginia variety of tobacco, over two time points, in both leaf and root material. Examining responses to all of the metals listed has allowed us to separate out specific responses from the general. Candidate gene lists have been produced for genes that have at least a two fold increase in expression levels. Inspection of these lists has shown that while there are some common genes that are expressed on metal treatment, there are a small number (<10%) that are elevated only on treatment with cadmium.