Networking Session and Forum Award Opportunity
Research Topics
- Multigenerational & Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance of Exposures
- Environmental Factors & Cancer
- Environmental Factors, Infertility & Reproductive Health
- Transcriptomic & Proteomic Approaches for Assessing the Impact of Environmental Exposures on Pregnancy
- Social Stressors, Environmental Contaminants & Perinatal Outcomes
- Targeted & Non-Targeted Exposome Multigenerational & Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance of Exposures
Multigenerational & Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance of Exposures
Facilitator: Diana Laird (EaRTH Pilot Project Program)
Explanation: A number of studies across model organisms have shown that perturbations including chemical exposures, psychosocial stress, and nutrition lead to phenotypic changes in offspring (multigenerational) or grandchildren (transgenerational). The epigenetic mechanisms that underpin how germ cells sense and transmit this information are still largely unclear, although those proposed include DNA methylation, chromatin modifications, small RNAs and prions.
Questions to provoke thought and spark ideas:
- How can we design mechanistic experiments to identify mechanisms using animal models?
- Are there human datasets that could be useful?
- What exposures (individual chemicals/mixtures), experimental models and epigenetic mechanisms are highest priority or most feasible to study?
Environmental Factors & Cancer
Facilitator: Peggy Reynolds (EaRTH Integrated Health Sciences Facility Core)
Explanation: There is high public interest in the degree to which environmental exposures may increase risk of cancer, but the long latency for disease development makes this a challenging area of study.
Questions to provoke thought and spark ideas:
- Identifying early markers of risk for cancer/health
- Identifying windows of susceptibility
- Identifying inequities by race/ethnicity, neighborhood, occupation
Environmental Factors, Infertility & Reproductive Health
Facilitator: Jennifer Fung (EaRTH Bioassay Facility Core, High-Throughput Chemical Screening)
Explanation: Environmental exposure is thought to contribute to the increasing incidence of infertility. How can we determine which environmental factors lead to this problem? Current methods using mammalian models are expensive and slow.
Questions to provoke thought and spark ideas:
- How can we measure the effects of environmental contaminants in human gametes?
- What are good alternative models that might be useful to bridge lack of mammalian and human data?
- What aspects of reproductive health that are susceptible to environmental exposure are potentially detrimental to infertility?
Transcriptomic & Proteomic Approaches for Assessing the Impact of Environmental Exposures on Pregnancy
Facilitator: Susan Fisher (EaRTH Bioassay Facility Core, Proteomics)
Explanation: Current technologies enable the global analysis of RNAs and proteins in samples such as the placenta and maternal blood.
Questions to provoke thought and spark ideas:
- What would you do with transcriptomic and proteomic data from these sources in the context of environmental exposures?
- How would you prioritize the exposures to be studied?
- How might these data synergize with complementary information about the causes of pregnancy complications?
Social Stressors, Environmental Contaminants & Perinatal Outcomes
Facilitator: Rachel Morello-Frosch (EaRTH Member)
Explanation: Integrating individual and place-based measures of exposures to social stress and environmental contaminants to assess cumulative effects on perinatal health and implications for health inequities.
Questions to provoke thought and spark ideas:
- How can we measure and analyze individual and place-based measures of exposures to environmental hazards/chemicals?
- What place-based and individual exposures to social stressors might enhance vulnerability to the toxic effects of environmental hazard exposures?
- How can we identify biological pathways/effect biomarkers that potentially mediate observed associations between social and environmental stressors and adverse perinatal and maternal outcomes?
Targeted & Non-Targeted Exposome Multigenerational & Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance of Exposures
Facilitators: June-Soo Park (EaRTH Bioassay Facility Core, Environmental Chemistry Laboratory)
Explanation: Humans are exposed to countless chemicals in a lifetime through diet, environmental and occupational sources, metabolomic capacity and pathways, etc. and many of these chemicals exert adverse health effects. Targeted measurement of those exogenous and endogenous chemicals are limited due to only a handful of analytical standards available in the market, and they take too long for development. Therefore, non-targeted analytical techniques have been introduced to biomonitoring as a complimentary technique in the fast screening and simultaneously identifying thousands of chemicals in human specimens and subsequently prioritizing chemicals and biomarkers of health concern.
Questions to provoke thought and spark ideas:
- What are some priority chemicals to measure for biomonitoring? [using targeted and nontargeted analysis]
- What are opportunities for translation/epidemiology work based on chemicals that are identified as ‘toxic’?
- What types/studies are there where we can use the new 51 PFAS panel for measurements?