Seminar Series: Steve Cole, PhD

"Social Regulation of Human Gene Expression"

Relationships between genes and social behavior have historically been viewed as a one-way street, with genes in control.  Recent analyses have challenged this view by discovering broad alterations in the expression of human genes as a function of differing socio-environmental conditions.  This talk summarizes the developing field of human social genomics, and its efforts to identity the types of genes that are subject to social regulation, the biological signaling pathways that mediate these effects, and the genetic polymorphisms that moderate their impact on individuals.  These findings provide a concrete molecular framework for understanding how external social and cultural processes interact with the human genome to shape the molecular physiology of our bodies and our personal health and developmental trajectories.