2016 SADII-SCORE Awardee, Johns Hopkins
Dr. Kristin Voegtline, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, is a developmental psychobiologist studying the organizational effects of the prenatal period on development after birth.
We now have increasing evidence that hormones impact the formation of the embryonic and fetal brain; Dr. Voegtline is looking into the impact of the hormones that cross the placenta and target that brain while the baby is still in the uterus. She believes that testosterone may have a different impact on boy and girl fetuses. Among organizing signals of the intrauterine environment, she is particularly interested in maternal sex steroids which may cross the placenta and target the fetal brain. In prior work, she has shown prenatal maternal testosterone levels are related to altered growth and neural maturation in fetuses and infants, and that effects are most pronounced for males. Dr. Voegtline will now test the hypothesis that prenatal testosterone exposure leaves an epigenetic mark via alterations to DNA methylation, a measure of gene functional capacity, and that testosterone action at the genetic level may be different for males and females.