Axis director : Ashley D. Wazana and Guillaume Dumas

Human health is not determined by DNA alone. Gene expression is influenced by the environment, including lifestyle, diet and psychosocial factors. Epigenetics establishes the link between these environmental exposures and health. It is imperative to understand the environmental interaction in the developmental origins of health and disease. Gene-environment modeling (GxE) provides a robust approach to studying the complex interplay of genetics, epigenetics and biological and environmental factors.

Objectives :
1. Develop and test various machine learning approaches to train models of the complex interactions between the epi/gen and the environment, which occur from preconception to the first years of life and have an impact on the child’s health and development;
2. Validate the predictive capability of our models using out-of-sample data sets;
3. Identify modifiable environmental factors that interact with biological susceptibility to disease, from preconception to the first years of life.