obesity | CAS in the Media | Washington State University

^{CAS in the Media} _{Arts and Sciences Media Headlines}

Findings from senior thesis published in Appetite journal

February 12, 2013

“The problem is no longer food scarcity, but too much food,” said Halley Morrison, a recent WSU biology graduate and author of an interdisciplinary Honors College senior thesis that was published in the journal Appetite.

Morrison, together with Tom Power, professor and chair of the human development department, analyzed more than 200 mother-child surveys and found that a mother’s eating habits and behavior at the dinner table can influence her preschooler’s obesity risk.

Epigenetic Disease Inheritance Linked to Plastics and Jet Fuel

January 25, 2013

WSU researchers have lengthened their list of environmental toxicants that can negatively affect as many as three generations of an exposed animal’s offspring.

Writing in the online journal PLOS ONE, scientists led by WSU molecular biologist Michael Skinner document reproductive disease and obesity in the descendants of rats exposed to various plastic compounds (including BPA). In a separate article in the journal Reproductive Toxicology, they report the first observation of cross-generation disease from a widely used hydrocarbon jet fuel mixture the military refers to as JP8.

Both studies are the first of their kind to see obesity stemming from the process of “epigenetic transgenerational inheritance.