Patrick McGowan

Research Interests: A major focus of Dr. McGowan's lab is the role of epigenetic mechanisms that confer inter-individual variation in glucocorticoid signaling pathways in complex disease. Another major focus is the role of early life environmental adversity in altering brain and behaviour later in life via epigenetic mechanisms. Keywords: Brain, Central Nervous System (CNS), Development, Developmental neuroendocrinology, Epigenetics, Fear, Fetal programming, Genetic expression, Glucocortioid receptors (GR), Hippocampus, Hormones, Human models, Hypothalamo-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) Axis, Mineralocorticoid receptors, Molecular biology, Neuronal plasticity, Neuroendocrinology, Stress Stress hormones Detailed Description: A major focus of Dr. McGowan's lab is the role of epigenetic mechanisms that confer inter-individual variation in glucocorticoid signaling pathways in complex disease. Another major focus is the role of early life environmental adversity in altering brain and behaviour later in life via epigenetic mechanisms. Social factors, infections, toxins and disease can all influence gluccorticoid signaling. As such, glucocorticoid signaling pathways act as sensors for environmental signals that affect a range of physiological functions from the response to stress to inflammation. Dr. McGowan published the first study on epigenetic mechanisms associated with suicide and early adversity in humans and the first tiling microarray analysis of the influence of early environment on epigenetic and transcriptomic signaling in the mammalian brain. His group recently published the first study of genome-wide epigenetic changes associated with Chronic Fatigue/Myalgic Encophalomyelitis. In his work with animal models, his research group showed that high fat diet exposure during development leads to altered glucocorticoid and immune signaling in adulthood in brain regions relevant for anxiety behavior. He is also studying the transgenerational epigenetic effects of variations in maternal care and prenatal stress in rodent models.

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