To provide convincing human evidence of inter- and trans-generational effects of parental and ancestral environmental exposures (in particular, smoking and stress in the childhoods of the grandparents and great grandparents of the ALSPAC cohort).  Analyses will concentrate on vision, hearing, cardiology, cognition, motor coordination, well-being, depression, behaviour and psychopathology in the study grandchildren.

Staff employed on this grant:  Yaz Iles-Caven, Karen Birmingham, Steve Gregory, Genette Ellis.

Projected funded by John Templeton Foundation (PIs: Jean Golding & Marcus Pembrey).

This project has two aims: (a) to determine further the ways in which the intergenerational responses of the parents (F1) to cigarette smoke in utero or early childhood may affect various phenotypic and DNA methylation outcomes in the offspring (F2). (b) To determine the efficacy of using self-completion questionnaires to identify key histories concerning the smoking and stress backgrounds of the study child’s ancestors (F0 and F0-1) and thence explore transgenerational effects in F2 phenotype and in methylation markers.

Data collection includes: (i) questionnaires to both study parents concerning their own parents/grandparents; (ii) a validation exercise (interviews on a random sample of 100 parents); (iii) DNA methylation markers and (iv) secondary data analyses.