Environmental Epigenetics and Nutrition
It is increasingly recognized that environmental exposure to chemical, nutritional, and behavioral factors alters gene expression and affects health and disease by not only mutating promoter and coding regions of genes, but also by modifying the epigenome — modifications to DNA that confer an additional layer of heritable gene regulation that lead to disease when deregulated.
The Dolinoy, Goodrich, and Svoboda Lab investigates environmental epigenetics and gene-environment interactions using animal models, human clinical samples, and human population studies. Specifically, research focuses on nutrition and environmental chemicals and how many common compounds, such as bisphenol A (BPA), phthalates (e.g. DEHP, DINP, DBP), mercury (Hg), and lead (Pb), may have deleterious physiological consequences through abnormal epigenetic and genetic regulation.