Perinatal Photoperiodic Programming of Adult Immune Function

Ohio State University Research Foundation -Do Not Use, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

Life requires an energetic trade-off between survival and investments in offspring. Being energetically-challenging, winter shifts the balance towards survival. Individuals use day lengths to determine the time of year to shift investment to immune function, a proxy for survival. This project will examine the mechanisms that underlie how early environmental conditions organize or program important physiological and behavioral survival responses later in adulthood. Because traits result from the interaction between genes and environment, these studies will use day length, a simple and precise environmental factor, to probe gene expression to gain insight into the interplay between environment and genetics in the development of the shift towards enhanced immune function in winter. The hypothesis that differences in day length or melatonin exposure during early development serve to program adult immune responses will be tested. Both peripheral and central inflammation will be examined, and the mechanisms through which day length programs adult immune function will be examined through a combination of behavioral, physiological, and gene expression studies. It is predicted that the early exposure to short days or to chronic melatonin (the hormone that mediates day length regulated processes) will improve inflammatory responses in adults. Taken together, results of these studies will address the source of variation in immune responses, provide a mechanistic basis for differential effects of season-of-birth on health, and help explain seasonal phenomena such as flu seasons. The results will also provide novel and important information about how animals may respond to global climatic change, how emergent diseases arise, and provide insights into how environmental regulatory mechanisms evolved. The broader implications of the proposed project include training of high school, undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral trainees from diverse cultural and historically-underrepresented backgrounds. All experimental results will be made easily accessible to the general public through a variety of media.