Dr. Alison Paquette, an investigator at the Institute of Systems Biology, was awarded an ECHO Opportunities in Infrastructure Fund (OIF) award to conduct research within PATHWAYS that will help elucidate the role of the placenta in child health and development. Working with the ECHO PATHWAYS team and existing transcriptomic analyses of banked placenta in the CANDLE and GAPPS cohort, Dr. Paquette and collaborating scientists will untangle the complex relationships and identify key regulators of gene expression in the placenta. She will apply this approach to gain insight into how environmental exposures influence placental gene expression, as well as how alterations in placental gene expression predict child health trajectories. Furthermore, she will apply this funding to develop tools for the broader ECHO community to utilize this transcription network, greatly enhancing the capacity of ECHO to explore molecular changes in the placenta that affect child health. Dr. Paquette’s award begins in September 2019 and will continue for two years.
