The P20 CHART (Charting Solutions for Health Impacts of Extreme Weather) Center and the Center for Achieving Resilience in Climate and Health (C-ARCH) will host its seminar on April 17, 2026. Dr. Thiago Arzua, postdoctoral research scientist at the Zuckerman Institute, will be presenting on "Environmental stressors and their intergenerational effect".
Join us in person in ARB EHS conference room or via Zoom. In-person attendance is only available to Columbia affiliates. Affiliates outside of Columbia are welcome to attend via Zoom.
Talk Abstract: Traumatic and stressful experiences can leave impacts across generations. A powerful example of this phenomenon is seen in the descendants of survivors of the Dutch Famine (1944–1945), who, despite having never experienced the trauma of food deprivation, are still at a higher risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, as well as schizophrenia. Animal models have also linked environmental stressors to transgenerational epigenetic phenotypes in the endocrine, metabolic, and olfactory systems.
The Marlin Lab studies this through a paradigm called olfactory fear conditioning, in which mice are taught to associate a specific odor with a mild foot shock. Mice that undergo this type of learning have an increased number of sensory neurons specific to that odor, and fascinatingly, so do their naïve offspring. Furthering this research, my postdoctoral project has also shown that there are intergenerational changes in the noradrenergic system, i.e. our fight-or-flight responses, of naïve mice whose parents were conditioned.
Taking the lessons learned from this project, as well as techniques in human brain organoid modelling I developed during my graduate work, I plan to lead a lab focusing on the intergenerational impacts of heat-related environmental stressors in the brain. These future projects can then synergistically work with existing efforts in climate and health, creating a solid foundation of molecular and neuromodulatory markers to be used for protective and mitigation strategies for our collective benefit, and for the generations to come.
