A5102841357- Epigenetics and DNA Methylation
- Birth, Development, and Health
- Neonatal Respiratory Health Research
- Genetic Syndromes and Imprinting
- Hepatitis C virus research
- RNA modifications and cancer
- Pediatric health and respiratory diseases
- Childhood Cancer Survivors' Quality of Life
- Genetic Associations and Epidemiology
- Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum
- Radiomics and Machine Learning in Medical Imaging
- Air Quality Monitoring and Forecasting
- Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior
- Immune responses and vaccinations
- Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving
- Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health
- Family Support in Illness
- Liver Disease Diagnosis and Treatment
- Air Quality and Health Impacts
- Energy and Environment Impacts
- IL-33, ST2, and ILC Pathways
- Research on Leishmaniasis Studies
- Hepatitis B Virus Studies
- Telemedicine and Telehealth Implementation
- Infant Development and Preterm Care
University of British Columbia
2015-2025
British Columbia Children's Hospital
2017-2025
Learning Partnership
2019
Child and Family Research Institute
2014-2018
St. Paul's Hospital
2017
University of British Columbia Hospital
2017
Family Research Institute
2015
Integrating the genotype with epigenetic marks holds promise of better understanding biology that underlies complex interactions inherited and environmental components define developmental origins a range disorders. The quality in utero environment significantly influences health over lifecourse. Epigenetics, particular DNA methylation marks, have been postulated as mechanism for enduring effects prenatal environment. Accordingly, neonate methylomes contain molecular memory individual...
DNA methylation is an epigenetic mark thought to be robust environmental perturbations on a short time scale. Here, we challenge that view by demonstrating the infection of human dendritic cells (DCs) with live pathogenic bacteria associated rapid and active demethylation at thousands loci, independent cell division. We performed integrated analysis data genome-wide methylation, histone patterns, chromatin accessibility, gene expression, before after infection. found infection-induced rarely...
Infection of macrophages by the intracellular protozoan Leishmania leads to down-regulation a number macrophage innate host defense mechanisms, thereby allowing parasite survival and replication. The underlying molecular mechanisms involved remain largely unknown. In this study, we assessed epigenetic changes in DNA methylation response infection with L. donovani as possible mechanism for driven deactivation defense. We quantified detected genome-wide cytosine status genome resulting from...
DNA methylation is influenced by both environmental and genetic factors increasingly thought to affect variation in complex traits diseases. Yet, the extent of ancestry-related differences methylation, their determinants, respective causal impact on immune gene regulation remain elusive. We report extensive population between 156 individuals African European descent, detected primary monocytes that are used as a model major innate immunity cell type. Most these (~ 70%) driven sequence...
Obesity is an escalating health problem worldwide, and hence the causes underlying its development are of primary importance to public health. There growing evidence that suboptimal intrauterine environment can perturb metabolic programing fetus, thereby increasing risk developing obesity in later life. However, link between early exposures womb, genetic susceptibility, perturbed epigenome on not well understood. In this study, we shed more light aspect by performing a comprehensive analysis...
To examine variation in child DNA methylation to assess its potential as a pathway for effects of childhood social adversity on health across the life course.In diverse, prospective community sample 178 kindergarten children, associations between three types experience and within buccal epithelial cells later were examined.Family income, parental education family psychosocial each associated with increased or decreased (488, 354 102 sites, respectively) unique set genomic CpG sites. Gene...
Abstract The genetic history of African populations is increasingly well documented, yet their patterns epigenomic variation remain uncharacterized. Moreover, the relative impacts DNA sequence and temporal changes in lifestyle habitat on human epigenome unknown. Here we generate genome-wide genotype methylation profiles for 362 rainforest hunter-gatherers sedentary farmers. We find that current historical a population have similarly critical methylome, but biological functions affected...
Abstract Prenatal adversity shapes child neurodevelopment and risk for later mental health problems. The quality of the early care environment can buffer some negative effects prenatal on development. Retrospective studies, in adult samples, highlight epigenetic modifications as sentinel markers environment; however, comparable data from pediatric cohorts are lacking. Participants were drawn Maternal Adversity Vulnerability Neurodevelopment (MAVAN) study, a longitudinal cohort with measures...
Abstract Numerous studies have linked exposure to stress adverse health outcomes through the effects of cortisol, a product response system, on cellular aging processes. Accelerated DNA methylation age is promising epigenetic marker associated with and disease risk that may constitute link from changes in neural structures. Specifically, elevated glucocorticoid signaling likely contributes accelerating age, which signify maladaptive stress-related cascade leads hippocampal atrophy. We...
Early life environments interact with genotype to determine stable phenotypic outcomes. Here we examined the influence of a variant in brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) gene (Val66Met), which underlies synaptic plasticity throughout central nervous system, on degree antenatal maternal anxiety associated neonatal DNA methylation. We also association between methylation and brain substructure volume, as function BDNF genotype. Infant, but not maternal, dramatically influences epigenome...
This study reveals the influence of child maltreatment on DNA methylation across genome and provides first evidence that a psychosocial intervention program, Nurse Family Partnership (NFP), which targets mothers at risk for abusive parenting, associates with variation in methylome adult offspring. The 188 participants were born to women randomly assigned control (n = 99) or nurse-visited groups 89) provided blood samples diagnostic interview age 27 years. Interindividual was described using...
The widespread use of accessible peripheral tissues for epigenetic analyses has prompted increasing interest in the study tissue-specific DNA methylation (DNAm) variation human populations. To date, characterizations inter-individual DNAm variability and concordance across have been largely performed adult therefore are limited their relevance to profiles from pediatric samples. Given that patterns early life undergo rapid changes linked a wide range health outcomes environmental exposures,...
Early-life adversity increases the risk of health problems. Interventions supporting protective and responsive caregiving offer a promising approach to attenuating adversity-induced changes in stress-sensitive biomarkers. This study tested whether participation an evidence-based dyadic psychosocial intervention, child-parent psychotherapy (CPP), was related lower epigenetic age acceleration, trauma-sensitive biomarker accelerated biological aging that is associated with later impairment,...
Epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) have focused primarily on DNA methylation as a chemically stable and functional epigenetic modification. However, the stability accuracy of measurement in different tissues extraction types is still being actively studied, longitudinal commonly studied peripheral great interest. Here, we used data from two studies, three tissue types, multiple time points to assess measured with Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChip array. Redundancy...
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a heterogeneous of the lungs that currently fourth leading cause death worldwide. Genetic factors account for only small amount COPD risk, but epigenetic mechanisms, including DNA methylation, have potential to mediate interactions between an individual's genetics and environmental exposure. methylation highly cell type-specific, individual type studies in are sparse. Fibroblasts present within airway parenchyma lung contribute aberrant...
DNA methylation is an epigenetic modification that plays a key role in gene regulation. Previous studies have investigated its genetic basis by mapping variants are associated with at specific sites, but these been limited to microarrays cover <2% of the genome and cannot account for allele-specific (ASM). Other performed whole-genome bisulfite sequencing on few individuals, lack statistical power identify methylation. We present novel approach which bisulfite-treated from many individuals...
Epigenetic modifications such as DNA methylation are both cell type and developmental age specific. Here, we show that the immunological maturation of blood types influences changes from naive cord to fully functional adult blood. Lymphoid cells in showed more variability than suggesting an antigen-dependent lymphoid throughout lifespan. Fewer between were observed myeloid cells, particularly monocytes, which demonstrated least number We also noted differences epigenetic ages by immune...
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic changed the landscape of hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment in Canada. In this study, we sought to describe characteristics, management, and outcomes patients treated during pandemic. Methods: Retrospective analysis British Columbia HCV Network included from March 17, 2018 February 22, 2022. Patients who started before after 2020 were designated pre-pandemic groups, respectively. followed until sustained virologic response 12 weeks post-treatment (SVR12)....
Polygenic risk scores (PRS) describe the genomic contribution to complex phenotypes and consistently account for a larger proportion of variance in outcome than single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) alone. However, there is little consensus on optimal data input generating PRS, existing approaches largely preclude use imputed posterior probabilities strand-ambiguous SNPs i.e., A/T or C/G polymorphisms. Our ability predict traits that arise from additive effects large number would likely...
Abstract The objective of the current work was to evaluate whether effects acute aerobic exercise on motor learning were dependent genetic variants impacting brain-derived neurotrophic factor ( BDNF val66met polymorphism) and dopamine D2 receptor DRD2/ANKK1 glu713lys in humans. A retrospective analysis performed determine these polymorphisms influence data from our two previous studies, which both demonstrated that a single bout prior practice enhanced implicit learning. Here, main finding...
Evidence that opioid agonist therapy (OAT) is associated with increased odds of hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment initiation among people who use drugs (PWUD) emerging. The objective this study was to determine the association between current OAT and HCV PWUD in a population-level linked administrative dataset.
The gene Mest (also known as Peg1 ) is regulated by genomic imprinting in the mouse and only paternal allele active for transcription. MEST similarly imprinted humans, where it a candidate growth retardation Silver-Russell syndrome. protein belongs to an ancient family of hydrolases but its function still unknown. It highly conserved vertebrates although expression observed marsupials eutherians, thus recent evolutionary event. Here we describe identification new RNA products at locus,...