January 22 @ 11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Seminar held in person only.
Dr. Richard Chang
Postdoc
Blumberg Lab
“Developmental Programming of Metabolic Susceptibility: Chromatin Architecture as a Link Between Environment and Physiology”
Early-life environmental exposures are increasingly recognized as determinants of long-term metabolic health, yet the mechanisms by which developmental events are translated into persistent physiological outcomes remain poorly understood. This seminar will describe work examining how developmental exposure to environmental obesogens programs metabolic susceptibility through stable alterations in chromatin architecture. Using mouse models of developmental exposure, changes in higher-order chromatin organization are identified during critical windows of germline and embryonic development, with these architectural features persisting into adulthood and across generations. Rather than inducing overt metabolic disease, these changes establish a latent state of susceptibility. The physiological consequences of this programmed state are revealed by postnatal metabolic challenges. Ancestral exposure sensitizes metabolic tissues, including brown adipose tissue, to Western diet–induced stress, leading to impaired thermogenic gene programs, altered immune signaling, and sex-specific metabolic dysfunction. These findings support a model in which chromatin architecture functions as a developmental “memory” of environmental exposure, linking early-life conditions to adult metabolic physiology. The seminar will conclude by outlining future research directions focused on defining the developmental timing, cell-type specificity, and molecular regulators of environmentally programmed chromatin states, with implications for understanding the developmental origins of metabolic disease.