Doctoral Dissertation Research: DNA Methylation and Human Reproductive Life History

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

Menarche (first menses) is a critical reproductive life history marker with potential links to early-life environment and later-life health risks. This dissertation research project investigates menarche in a life history framework, to better understand the relationship among DNA modifications, early life psychosocial and energetic stressors, and age at menarche, as well as the effect of these variables on adult reproductive hormone levels. The project will contribute to a growing body of knowledge on the ways that childhood environmental variables directly and indirectly affect human reproductive life history trajectories, and may inform public health research related to the timing of menarche. Results of this study will be shared with the wider scientific community, and the project will support training of a female graduate student and inclusive science outreach efforts. Epigenetic traits like DNA methylation are thought to be modified by an individual?s early environment. This project examines DNA methylation as one way that different environments can produce variation in reproductive traits, namely age at menarche and adult reproductive hormone concentrations. The research is conducted in two genetically similar populations living in different early-life environments, in order to parse the different effects of genes and developmental environments on these reproductive traits. The investigators will explore the contexts in which energetic versus psychosocial stressors are more likely to affect age at menarche, building on current conceptual models that describe the effects of childhood environments on adult reproductive traits. The investigators will test for combined effects of DNA methylation and early stressors on menarcheal age, and for effects of all three variables on adult hormone concentrations.