MRC INTEGRATIVE EPIDEMIOLOGY UNIT (IEU)
SEMINAR SERIES

 Wednesday, 2^nd May, 2018 : 11.30 – 12.30
Room OS6, Second Floor, Oakfield House

 

Theresia M. Schnurr¹, MSc, PhD, PostDoc, Novo Nordisk Research Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research

Exploring prenatal exposures possibly modifying the influence of the maternal and child genetics on childhood obesity

In this project, we aim to explore whether prenatal exposures (defined as maternal BMI, smoking, physical activity, coffee consumption, alcohol consumption and stress during pregnancy) interact with the mother’s and child’s genetic predisposition to obesity on childhood obesity at 7 years of age.

Within the Danish National Birth Cohort, we have following selected mother-child pairs with genome-wide genetic information and imputations to the Haplotype Reference Consortium panel to address these questions:

1)    Randomly selected mothers and their children (n=510 pairs)

2)    Obese mothers and their children (n=431 pairs)

3)    Most heavy children at 7 years and their mothers (n=774 pairs)

Furthermore, we plan to investigate direct effects of these exposures on childhood obesity, ideally within the Early Growth Genetics (EGG) consortium.

Other members of project team:

Camilla S. Morgen^2,3, Ellen A. Nøhr⁴, Torben Hansen¹, Thorkild IA. Sørensen^1,3

Affiliations:

¹ Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, Section of Metabolic Genetics Faculty of Health and Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

² National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark

³ Department of Public Health, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

⁴ Research Unit for Gynaecology and Obstetrics, Department of Clinical Research, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

Short Biography

Born and raised in the black-forest, Germany, Theresia left her hometown right out of high-school to move to Fairbanks, Alaska, where she received a scholarship for representing the University’s cross-country skiing and running teams at national competitions from 2008-2013. During her time in Alaska she was able to pursue her BSc. and MSc. in Biochemistry/Molecular Biology and got her hands on somewhat adventurous research projects investigating GLUT4 translocation in peripheral mononuclear cells in exercising sled dogs. These projects made her interested in pursuing a PhD in a topic related to physical activity/exercise and metabolic disease. She got in touch with her supervisor Torben Hansen at the University of Copenhagen and together they defined Theresia’s PhD project “The impact of genetic variation on objectively assessed physical activity and fitness and its relevance for obesity and metabolic traits” which she defended in March 2018. Theresia is now employed as PostDoc at the Novo Nordisk Research Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research and her current research interests are within genetic epidemiology, trying to decipher whether prenatal exposures (among those are physical activity) interact with the mother’s and child’s genetic predisposition to childhood obesity. 

ALL WELCOME