The Jean Andrews Centennial Visiting Professor Lecture

"Epigenetics: How Genes and Environment Interact"

Dr. Randy Jirtle, Ph.D.
Visiting Professor
McArdle Laboratories, University of Wisconsin

Thursday, March 6th from 6-7 PM
in the Thompson Conference Center Amphitheater 
located at 2405 Robert Dedman (the southwest corner of Dean Keeton and Red River)

This free lecture, followed by a reception, is open to the general public as well as all UT faculty, students, and staff.

The Department of Nutritional Sciences announces that Dr. Randy Jirtle, considered by many to be the "godfather" of epigenetics, is this year's Department of Nutritional Sciences Jean Andrews Centennial Visiting Professor. As described by Time magazine for his 2007 Man of the Year nomination "Dr. Jirtle's 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. His trailblazing discoveries have produced a far more complete and useful understanding of human development and diseases".

"You are what you eat" is not just an old adage, but now scientific fact: your diet and lifestyle (and even that of your parents and grandparents) modulates your own personal risk and development of disease in adult life. Dr. Jirtle has spent his career investigating how the risk of developing serious diseases later in life, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity and cancer, is influenced by nutrition and diet during fetal development and infancy, as well as by your parent's and grandparent's diet and lifestyle choices.

The Jean Andrews Centennial Visiting Professorship in Human Nutrition was established in 1983 by an endowment from Dr. Jean Andrews and matched by The University of Texas at Austin during its Centennial Year. Dr. Andrews, an alumna of Human Ecology, was a unique scholar that exemplified the multiple disciplines that reflect the human experience. She was a scientist whose focus was on nutritional sciences, botany, marine biology and anthropology as well as a recognized author, painter and an inveterate world traveler.