Environmental Epigenetics in Toxicology and Public Health

Dr. Fry is Director of the Institute for Environmental Health Solutions and the Carol Remmer Angle Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at UNC-Chapel Hill. Her lab focuses on understanding how environmental exposures to toxic substances are associated with human disease. With a particular focus on genomic and epigenomic perturbations, her lab uses toxicogenomic and systems biology approaches to identify key molecular pathways that associate environmental exposure with diseases. A current focus in the lab is to study prenatal exposure to various environmental contaminants including arsenic, cadmium, and perflourinated chemicals. Dr. Fry aims to understand molecular mechanisms by which such early exposures are associated with long-term health effects in humans. Ultimately, Dr. Fry’s lab aims to identify mechanisms of contaminant-induced disease and the basis for inter-individual disease susceptibility. Dr. Tollefsbol is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and a Senior Scientist in the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center, Integrative Center for Aging Research, Nutrition Obesity Research Center, University Wide Microbiome Center, and the Comprehensive Diabetes Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He is Director of the UAB Cell Senescence Culture Facility which he established in 1999. Dr. Tollefsbol trained as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Assistant Research Professor with members of the National Academy of Science at Duke University and the University of North Carolina. He earned doctorates in molecular biology and osteopathic medicine from the University of North Texas Health Sciences Center and his bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Houston. He has received prior funding from the NCI, NHLBI, NIMH and other federal institutes as well as the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR), and the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) among many other sources.

Section I. Epigenetic Mechanisms/Machinery 1. DNA methylation/chromatic regulation/non-coding RNAs 2. Tools for the assessment of epigenetic regulation

Section II. Transdisciplinary approaches for the study of environmental epigenetics 3. Model organisms and their application in environmental epigenetics 4. Epidemiological concepts in environmental epigenetics

Section III. Epigenetic programming of disease in relation to the environment 5. Pregnancy and Birth outcomes 6. Neurodevelopment outcomes 7. Cancer 8. Respiratory dysfunction 9. Immune dysfunction 10. Cardio/Metabolic disease 11. Aging

Section IV. Transgenerational epigenetic effects of the environment 12. Transgenerational effects of environmental contaminants

Section V. Epigenome-targeted therapies in environmental health science 13. Nutrition 14. Manipulation of Epigenetic machinery

Section VI. Conclusions and Future Perspectives 15. Conclusions and Future Perspectives: The environment and the epigenome