Date/Time
Date(s) - 03/01/2024
9:00 am - 10:00 am
Category(ies)
Noah Snyder-Mackler, PhD
Associate Professor, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University
Date: Friday, March 1, 2024
Time: 9:00 a.m.
Location: PSH 152
Abstract
Exposures to adversity, from social to environmental, increase the risk of many diseases associated with aging. In this talk, I will discuss my lab’s work in nonhuman primates examining the mechanisms through which adverse experiences alter our immune cells and brain, with a particular focus on how these experiences may even accelerate the aging process at the molecular level.
BioSketch
Research in the Snyder-Mackler(SMack) lab in the School of Life Sciences and Center for Evolution and Medicine at Arizona State University sits at the nexus of the social environment and the genome. We use molecular genetic techniques to probe the dynamic interaction between the social environment and the genome with the aim of understanding the fitness consequences of behavioral variation. Our molecular and computational lab combines demographic and behavioral data with high throughput genomics and the requisite bioinformatic and statistical tools to probe the dynamic interaction between the environment and the genome. We tackle questions from two directions:
1.Identifying the molecular mechanisms through which the environment, age, socioeconomic status, and lived experiences alter physiology, health, and survival.
2.Examining the molecular and physiological adaptations that help organisms thrive in extreme environments.
We conduct this work using socially complex nonhuman primates and dogs, where we pair molecular, computational, and statistical tools from genomics, behavioral ecology, and neuroscience with theories from sociology, evolutionary biology, and immunology, to investigate the dynamic interaction between our environments and our bodies.