Randy L. Jirtle, Ph.D.

Dr Jirtle receives Linus Pauling Award

Institute for Functional Medicine

At the Institute for Functional Medicine’s 2014 Annual International Conference, held May 29 – 31, 2014 in San Francisco, California, Randy L. Jirtle, PhD, was honored by receiving the Linus Pauling Functional Medicine Award. The Linus Pauling Award has been presented by the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM) since 1996 to clinicians and researchers whose work has pioneered important principles in the Functional Medicine model. Jeffrey Bland, PhD, IFM Chairman Emeritus, had this to say about Dr. Jirtle’s selection as the 2014 Linus Pauling Functional Medicine Award recipient:

“He is an extraordinary discoverer who crossed the boundaries of disciplinary myopia to become the father of environmental epigenomics. I also call him the father of nutritional epigenetics because of the important observation he has made as to the role that nutrients play in developmental biology and modulating the epigenome’s expression into the phenotype. In his work at Duke, with his post-doctoral student Dr. Robert Waterland, they made what I would consider one of those frame-shifting, epic, seismic discoveries that the nutritional environment of the pregnant animal will influence the phenotypic outcome of the offspring.”

July 19, 2014Tweet

NIH Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series

On April 18, 2012, Dr. Jirtle delivered a lecture on "Epigenetics: How Genes and Environment Interact" as part of the NIH Director's prestigious Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series.

August 9, 2012Tweet

Person of the Year 2007 Nominee

Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and pioneer in the science of addiction, nominated Dr. Jirtle to be Time Magazine's Person of the Year 2007.

I'd select the Duke University scientist whose pioneering work in epigenetics and genomic imprinting has uncovered a vast territory in which a gene represents less of an inexorable sentence and more of an access point for the environment to modify the genome. The trailblazing discoveries of Dr. Randy Jirtle have produced a far more complete and useful understanding of human development and diseases.

August 9, 2012Tweet

Genome-wide mapping of human imprinted genes

Luedi, et. al. Genome Res. (Dec 2007)

Imprinted genes are at high risk for envolvement in diseases since a single genetic mutation or an environmentally-induced epigenetic change can alter their function. A genome-wide search for imprinted genes in the human genome, with the use of computer-learning algorithms, resulted in the identification of 156 novel candidate imprinted genes, fewer than the number predicted in mice and in many cases different. Consequently, mice may not be a suitable choice for studying diseases resulting principally from the epigenetic deregulation of imprinted genes, or for assessing human risk from environmental factors that alter the epigenome.

August 9, 2012Tweet

Negative bisphenol A effects on the epigenome blocked by nutritional supplements

Dolinoy, et. al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 104:13056-13061 (2007)

In utero or neonatal exposure to bisphenol A (BPA), a high-production-volume chemical used in the manufacture of polycarbonate plastic, is associated with higher body weight, increased breast and prostate cancer, and altered reproductive function. This study shows that exposure to BPA during pregnancy changes offspring phenotype by stably altering the epigenome, an effect that can be counteracted by maternal dietary supplements.

August 9, 2012Tweet

2006 Distinguished Achievement Award

University of Wisconsin-Madison, College of Engineering

Dr. Jirtle received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering at the 59th annual Engineers' Day.

Dr. Jirtle happily straddles the fields of biology and physics, and once again is using his engineering training as he begins a project to understand the impact of radiation on the epigenome. His efforts may enable him to identify nutritional supplements that protect the body from low-dose radiation.

August 9, 2012Tweet

You are what your mother ate!

Waterland and Jirtle. Mol Cell Biol 23:5293-300 (2003)

Dietary supplementation with extra folic acid, vitamin B(12), choline, and betaine alters the phenotype of Agouti mouse offspring via increased CpG methylation, suggesting that dietary supplementation, long presumed to be purely beneficial, may have unintended deleterious influences on the establishment of epigenetic gene regulation in humans.

August 6, 2012Tweet

Callipyge mutation identified

Freking, et. al. Genome Res 12:1496-506 (2002)

A small genetic region near the telomere of ovine chromosome 18 was previously shown to carry the mutation causing the callipyge muscle hypertrophy phenotype in sheep. The mutation lies in a region of high homology among mouse, sheep, cattle, and humans, but not in any previously identified expressed transcript. Initial functional analysis indicates the sequence encompassing the mutation is part of a novel transcript expressed in sheep fetal muscle named CLPG1.

August 6, 2012Tweet

Divergent evolution in M6P/IGF2R imprinting: implications for cloning and cancer

Killian, et. al. Hum Mol Genet 10:1721-8 (2001)

M6P/IGF2R imprinting first appeared approximately 150 million years ago following the divergence of prototherian from therian mammals. Following this, M6P/IGF2R is imprinted in Artiodactyla, as it is in Rodentia and Marsupialia, but not in Scandentia, Dermoptera and Primates, including ringtail lemurs and humans. The absence of M6P/IGF2R imprinting in extant primates, due to its disappearance from the primate lineage over 75 million years ago, demonstrates that imprinting at this locus does not predispose to human disease. Moreover, the divergent evolution of M6P/IGF2R imprinting predicts that the success of in vitro embryo procedures such as cloning may be species dependent.

August 6, 2012Tweet

Marsupials and eutherians reunited

Killian, et. al. Mamm Genome 12:513-7 (2001)

The three living divisions of mammals are monotremes, marsupials and 'placental' mammals. Determining the sister relationships among these three groups is the most fundamental question in mammalian evolution. Statistical analysis of the M6P/IGF2R unambiguously supports the morphology-based Theria hypothesis of mammalian evolution that excludes monotremes from a clade of marsupials and eutherians.

August 6, 2012Tweet