Genetic and Epigenetic Insights Into the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease

The developmental origins of health and disease hypothesis posit that perturbations in-utero maternal environment contributes to functional and metabolic programming, as well as structural adaptations of fetal tissues predisposing the individual to chronic diseases during childhood and adulthood. Genetic and epigenetic studies have begun documenting molecular mechanisms that contribute to shared pathogenetic pathways between early life outcomes such as fetal growth and later-life chronic diseases. Integrative genomic and epigenetic studies involving pregnant women, the placenta, and their offspring can lead to novel discoveries of molecular signals of early origins of childhood and adulthood diseases.

In this Research Topic, we aim to gather articles from genomic and epigenetic studies of maternal-placental-fetal genomic and epigenomic factors and their influences on pregnancy outcomes, and childhood and adult diseases. Additionally, we will consider studies that compare and present the SNP variation datasets and large-scale consortium gene expression patterns across multiple diseases using GTEx, ENCODE, and NIH Roadmap Epigenomic for functional annotations of non-coding genome with genomic, transcriptomic, and epigenomic data resources. Original Research manuscripts, brief reports, and reviews are welcomed. Please note that submission of abstracts is optional.