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 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He holds doctorates in molecular biology and osteopathic medicine, trained with National Academy of Science members and has over 200 peer-reviewed publications. Reports highlighting the translatability to the lay public of the discoveries made in his laboratory have appeared in international media representing >50 million readers. Dr. Tollefsbol has been featured as an Investigator in the Spotlight by the NIH as well as a Scientist in the Spotlight by ScienceNow. He is an Associate Editor for Frontiers in Genetics, a contributor to Lewin’s GENES classic textbook and Lead Editor for Elsevier’s Translational Epigenetics Series. Dr. Tollefsbol has been named a “Highly Ranked Scholar” worldwide (ScholarGPS). He has been invited for numerous endowed keynote presentations, his research has been highlighted in eScience News and ScienceDaily and he has published 20 scholarly books on topics related to his research.

"This is an important entry in the Translational Epigenetic series at a time that such methods are moving from a status of novel to practice and even translational. This beautifully illustrated volume in the series will likely become useful, if not essential, for two groups -- graduate students encountering the material for the first time and seasoned professionals, often researchers, who have read about these techniques and now wish to employ them. Given the emergence of this field, I don't believe many years will pass before a second edition is necessary. This is perhaps the most essential public health book I have reviewed in some time." --© Doody’s Review Service, 2021, John T. Pierce, MBBS(MD), reviewer, expert opinion

• Section I. Epigenetic Mechanisms/Machinery1. DNA methylation/chromatic regulation/non-coding RNAs2. Tools for the assessment of epigenetic regulationSection II. Transdisciplinary approaches for the study of environmental epigenetics 3. Model organisms and their application in environmental epigenetics4. Epidemiological concepts in environmental epigeneticsSection III. Epigenetic programming of disease in relation to the environment5. Pregnancy and Birth outcomes6. Neurodevelopment outcomes7. Cancer8. Respiratory dysfunction9. Immune dysfunction10. Cardio/Metabolic disease11. AgingSection IV. Transgenerational epigenetic effects of the environment12. Transgenerational effects of environmental contaminantsSection V. Epigenome-targeted therapies in environmental health science13. Nutrition14. Manipulation of Epigenetic machinerySection VI. Conclusions and Future Perspectives 15. Conclusions and Future Perspectives: The environment and the epigenome