Weinberg - prenatal alcohol serotonin & epigenetics

Another study we did, actually with another; with two other colleagues at UBC: Sheila Innis who’s a biochemical nutrition; who is a biochemist who studies nutrition, and Angela Devlin who is specifically looking at epigenetics. And there we found changes with our animal model, changes with prenatal alcohol exposure in genes related to stress, and to depression. So changes in genes related to the function of serotonin. And serotonin is a neurotransmitter, a chemical in the brain, that’s very important in a variety of activities, but it’s one of the neurotransmitters that we know is altered in depression. And in fact many antidepressants target serotonin. Serotonin reuptake inhibitors are a very common type of antidepressant. So in our animal model we found changes related to genes involved in stress, and genes involved in serotonin function. So in two different sets of studies now, with different colleagues, we’ve begun to see changes in gene expression, and in the study with Doctors Innis and Devlin, we saw changes in epigenetic mechanisms which would affect function and expression of the genes related to serotonin.