Biology at birth: the role of infancy in providing the foundation for lifetime success

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Infancy is a perilous time for any organism, with significant changes as individuals move from the maternal protected environment to the outside world. Massive anatomical, behavioral, and physiologic changes start at birth, and continue through development, with implications for adult survival and success. We have organized a symposium that addresses infancy from an integrated perspective, highlighting that this period of time in any individual’s life can shape its entire future. While neonatologists, pediatricians, and pediatric specialists across all clinical subdisciplines are broadly and deeply trained, less integration exists amongst the basic scientists who provide the substrate for clinical research and advances in treatment and rehabilitation. Our goal is to bring together basic science and clinical researchers across various life science disciplines for conversation, collaboration, and interaction across disciplinary boundaries as a way of promoting novel and innovative research at this specific moment of development. We propose three activities, which align with our Specific Aims: organize Main and Supplemental symposia on infancy at 2023 SICB meeting (SA1); a organize lunchtime workshop for participants and trainees (SA2); and publish an issue of Integrative & Comparative Biology including all platform and poster presenters, a synthetic introduction, and an overview and conclusions of the workshop (SA3). The main symposium includes three general topics: (1) how the prenatal environment shapes infant phenotype; (2) perinatal physiology and development; (3) the longitudinal impacts of infant experiences on phenotype and performance. This symposium as already been accepted for the Society of Comparative and Integrative Biology 2023 meeting, and our 11 speakers have accepted, including a commitment to submit a manuscript for peer review in early 2023 (per society and journal guidelines). We have begun recruiting speakers for our Supplemental Symposium and poster sessions (open to anyone within the society). The speakers who have committed to this symposium span multiple physiologic systems (including neurological, cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, digestive, endocrine) and multiple model species (humans, pigs, sheep, rodents). We anticipate that the discussions among individuals representing the three topic headings will galvanize interactions and cross- fertilizations. This in turn will promote new and integrative work on the both the underlying normal physiology and the specific pathophysiologies that characterize infancy.