Liedmann Group

Environmental toxicants are an integral part of human life. As pollutants in the air we breathe, as pesticide and fertilizer residues in our food, or as soluble components in water bottles and plastic packaging. Accumulating evidence suggests that exposure to environmental toxicants not only inflicts adverse health effects in the exposed individual but can persist in subsequent unexposed generations through abnormal epigenetic modifications in germ cells, thereby causing adverse health effects like infertility, metabolic disorders and neurological changes in subsequent generations. However, despite progress in our general understanding of inheritable epigenetic modifications as a result of environmental exposures, their effects on immunity and host defense and consequent impact on multiple pathologies including cancer, microbial susceptibility, and autoimmune diseases across generations is severely understudied.

Our laboratory investigates the central hypothesis that ancestral environmental exposure causes epigenetic dysregulation that manifest in altered immune cell function, resulting in epigenetic inheritance of immune-mediated pathologies in unexposed, future generations. To test this hypothesis in detail, we will (i) characterize how environmental exposure causes inheritable epigenetic dysregulation in germ cells and (ii) examine how ancestral environmental experiences influence immune cell function.

The outcome of our studies will provide fundamental insights into how our immunological health was shaped by the environment of our ancestors and how we can adapt our environment today to protect the health of future generations.