Doctoral Dissertation Research: DNA Methylation and Human Reproductive Life History

月经初潮（第一次月经）是一个关键的生殖生命史标志，与早期生活环境和晚年健康风险有潜在联系。本论文的研究项目调查初潮的生活史框架，以更好地了解DNA修饰，早期生活的心理和精力充沛的压力，初潮年龄之间的关系，以及这些变量对成年生殖激素水平的影响。该项目将有助于增加关于童年环境变量如何直接和间接影响人类生殖生活史轨迹的知识，并可能为与初潮时间有关的公共卫生研究提供信息。这项研究的结果将与更广泛的科学界分享，该项目将支持培训一名女研究生和包容性科学外联工作。像DNA甲基化这样的表观遗传特征被认为是由个体修饰的？早期环境。该项目研究DNA甲基化作为不同环境可以产生生殖特征变化的一种方式，即初潮年龄和成年生殖激素浓度。该研究是在两个遗传相似的群体生活在不同的早期生活环境中进行的，以解析基因和发育环境对这些生殖性状的不同影响。研究人员将探索能量与心理社会压力更有可能影响初潮年龄的背景，建立在当前描述童年环境对成年生殖特征影响的概念模型基础上。研究人员将测试DNA甲基化和早期压力对初潮年龄的综合影响，以及所有三个变量对成人激素浓度的影响。

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.