Gorska Laboratory

Non-genetic inheritance of allergic diseases

It is increasingly recognized that non-DNA sequence-based information can be inherited across generations in organisms ranging from yeast to plants to humans. This information emerges as a result of parental interactions with an environment or due to parental disease. The non-genetic inheritance is postulated to contribute to the development of allergies and asthma. In epidemiological studies, childhood asthma positively associates with maternal stress and maternal exposures to air pollutants, and negatively, with maternal exposure to microorganisms and microbial products present in the farming environment.  Mechanisms how maternal environment and health status affect predisposition to asthma in offspring are unclear. Our lab is focused on addressing these knowledge gaps.

The goals of our lab are to define maternal information that is gained and transmitted to offspring or lost and not transferred to offspring, elucidate routes of information transfer (placenta, breast milk, gametes), delineate offspring cells and pathways that are programmed by this information, and study how these cells and pathways contribute to the development of asthma. The lab has particular interest in cells and pathways of the immune system. The translational goals are to identify early-life biomarkers of predisposition to asthma in humans and define molecular targets for development of preventive drugs.

To accomplish these goals, our lab uses mouse models, human cord blood samples, blood samples from young children with asthma, high-parameter flow cytometry, bulk and single-cell RNA-sequencing, ATAC-sequencing, and many other state-of-the-art methods and techniques in immunology, developmental biology and biochemistry.