Chair: Colette Miller, US EPA
Co-Chair: Luke Montrose, Colorado State University

Primary Endorser: Reproductive and Developmental Toxicology Specialty Section


Endorser(s): Molecular and Systems Biology Specialty Section


Endorser(s): Occupational and Public Health Specialty Section

Exposure to environmental stressors in fathers is an important, yet understudied, mode of developmental toxicity in offspring. While maternal exposure is a critical route for both adverse birth outcomes and lifelong disease risk, emerging evidence demonstrates that what the father is exposed to prior to conception may hold just as much weight. Exposures to environmental stressors in fathers have been linked to several phenotypic changes in their offspring, including higher risks of cardiometabolic disease and neurobehavioral dysfunction. Importantly, this transfer of disease risk appears to be imparted primarily through epigenetic alterations in sperm that interfere with the early transcriptomic environment of the embryo. This Symposium will examine the current toxicological evidence for paternally mediated developmental reprogramming across various model organisms and discuss the potential implications on risk assessment. Furthermore, this session will explore the unique epigenetic mechanisms that drive these effects, including environmental influences on both the sperm non-coding RNA population and the DNA methylome and through histone modifications. These presentations will hopefully inspire researchers to parse out the unique, and potentially synergetic, contributions of both maternal and paternal exposures within their current research programs. Collectively, this Symposium will highlight a new paradigm in developmental toxicology to catalyze additional work in this area.

IAT ITS Designation: Innovations in Toxicological Sciences (ITS)