Connie J MulliganUniversity of Florida | UF · Department of Anthropology
Connie J Mulligan
PhD
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307
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Introduction
Publications
Publications (307)
The GPT-4 large language model (LLM) and ChatGPT chatbot have emerged as accessible and capable tools for generating English-language text in a variety of formats. GPT-4 has previously performed well when applied to questions from multiple standardized examinations. However, further evaluation of trustworthiness and accuracy of GPT-4 responses acro...
Touch DNA” is a form of trace DNA that is presumed to be deposited when an individual touches something and leaves behind DNA‐containing skin cells, sweat, or other fluids. While touch DNA is often the result of direct contact (i.e., primary transfer), it can also be indirectly transferred between surfaces or individuals (e.g., secondary or tertiar...
Objectives
Maternal stress has long been associated with lower birthweight, which is associated with adverse health outcomes including many adult diseases. The underlying mechanisms remain elusive although changes in gene expression may play a role. Studies are only beginning to test how maternal stress impacts gene expression as reflected in the t...
In the present scoping review, we explore whether existing evidence supports the premise that social determinants of health (SDoH) affect immigrant health outcomes through their effects on the microbiome. We adapt the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities' research framework to propose a conceptual model that considers the in...
Background:
Most research on discrimination and health operationalizes discrimination as direct individual experiences. Here, we examine the social patterning of vicarious discrimination, an important but largely overlooked dimension of discrimination.
Methods:
Drawing on community-based participatory research with a multi-stage probability samp...
Background and objectives
The Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) hypothesis posits that early life adversity is associated with poor adult health outcomes. Epidemiological evidence has supported this framework by linking low birthweight with adult health and mortality, but the mechanisms remain unclear. Accelerated epigenetic aging...
Prenatal maternal stress has a negative impact on child health but the mechanisms through which maternal stress affects child health are unclear. Epigenetic variation, such as DNA methylation, is a likely mechanistic candidate as DNA methylation is sensitive to environmental insults and can regulate long-term changes in gene expression. We recruite...
The developing infant gut microbiome is highly sensitive to environmental exposures, enabling its evolution into an organ that supports the immune system, confers protection from infection, and facilitates optimal gut and central nervous system function. In this study, we focus on the impact of maternal psychosocial stress on the infant gut microbi...
Forensic "touch" DNA samples are low-quantity samples that are recovered from surfaces that have been touched by single or multiple individuals. These samples can include DNA from primary contributors who directly touched the surface, as well as secondary contributors whose DNA was transferred to the surface through an intermediary. It is difficult...
Background:
In the United States, hypertension disproportionately afflicts over half of African American adults, many of whom also experience racial discrimination. Understanding gene x discrimination effects may help explain racial disparities in hypertension.
Methods:
We tested for main effects and interactive effects of five candidate single...
Responses to early life adversity differ greatly across individuals. Elucidating which factors underlie this variation can help us better understand how to improve health trajectories. Here we used a case:control study of refugee and non-refugee youth, differentially exposed to war-related trauma, to investigate the effects of genetics and psychoso...
Open data sharing democratizes science by making data more equitably available throughout the world. Furthermore, open data sharing improves the reproducibility and quality of research and enables new collaborations powered by the freely available data. Open data are defined as data that can be freely used, reused, and redistributed by anyone. For...
Bioengineered platforms, intended to be used in the investigation of human health and disease, often incorporate cells of unknown ancestry or that lack diversity. To develop tools and platforms that benefit the entire human population, we must consider the ancestry of cells and intentionally diversify the cells we use in our designs.
Objectives
The World Health Organization estimates that almost 300 million people suffer from depression worldwide. African Americans are understudied for depression-related phenotypes despite widespread racial disparities. In our study of African Americans, we integrated information on psychosocial stressors with genetic variation in order to bett...
Special Issue ‐ Race reconciled II: Interpreting and communicating biological variation and race in 2021
Many sociocultural factors, like poverty and trauma, or homelessness versus a safe neighborhood, can get “under our skin” and affect our lives. These factors may also get “into our genes” through epigenetic changes that influence how genes are e...
Special Issue ‐ Race reconciled II: Interpreting and communicating biological variation and race in 2021
Enhanced production of dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) by the fetal hypothalamic‐pituitary‐adrenal (HPA) axis enables maturational events critical for labor induction and neonatal adaptation. Despite knowledge of the interconnected nature of maternal and fetal physiology and dramatic changes in DHEA production after birth, few studies have examined D...
The World Health Organization estimates that almost 300 million people suffer from depression worldwide. Depression is the most common mental health disorder and shows racial disparities in disease prevalence, age of onset, severity of symptoms, frequency of diagnosis, and treatment utilization across the United States. Since depression has both so...
Objectives:
Experiences of interpersonal discrimination are pervasive stressors in the lives of African Americans. Increased discrimination stress may cause premature aging. Telomere length (TL) is a plastic genetic trait that is an emerging indicator of cellular health and aging. Short TL is a risk factor for the earlier onset of disease. TL shor...
The developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) hypothesis posits that early childhood stressors disproportionately impact adult health. Numerous studies have found adult mental health to be associated with childhood adversities and genetic variants, particularly in genes related to neurochemistry. However, few studies have examined the way...
Early childhood trauma can have profound and lifelong effects on adult mental health and psychosocial wellbeing. Nevertheless, responses to trauma are highly variable. Genetic variants may help explain variation in responses to trauma by identifying alleles that associate with changes in mental health measures. Protective factors, such as resilienc...
The developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) hypothesis posits that early childhood stressors disproportionately impact adult health. Numerous studies have found adult mental health to be associated with childhood adversities and genetic variants, particularly in genes related to neurochemistry. However, few studies have examined the way...
Objectives
Modern humans are thought to have interbred with Neanderthals in the Near East soon after modern humans dispersed out of Africa. This introgression event likely took place in either the Levant or southern Arabia depending on the dispersal route out of Africa that was followed. In this study, we compare Neanderthal introgression in contem...
Introduction: Previous anthropological studies have demonstrated the utility of integrating genetic and psychosocial data, such as discrimination, to understand complex phenotypes such as blood pressure (BP). In these studies, including both single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) and psychosocial measures in the model only revealed significant SNPs...
The Austronesian dispersal across the Indonesian Ocean to Madagascar and the Comoros has been well documented, but in an unexplained anomaly, few to no traces have been found of the Austronesian expansion in East Africa or the Arabian Peninsula. To revisit this peculiarity, we surveyed the Western Indian Ocean rim populations to identify potential...
Social and behavioral epigenetics is the study of psychosocial factors that impact biology through an epigenetic mechanism. Epigenetic modifications influence the activity of genes without altering the underlying DNA sequence. DNA methylation is one type of epigenetic modification that has been widely studied and found to associate with a broad ran...
Objectives
Modern humans are thought to have interbred with Neanderthals in the Near East soon after modern humans dispersed out of Africa. This introgression event likely took place in either the Levant or southern Arabian depending on which dispersal route out of Africa was followed. In this study, we compare Neanderthal introgression in contempo...
Deaths due to hypertension in the US are highest among African Americans, who have a higher prevalence of hypertension and more severe hypertensive symptoms. Research indicates that there are both genetic and sociocultural risk factors for hypertension. Racial disparities in hypertension also likely involve genetic and sociocultural factors, but th...
Epigenetic variation represents a unique aspect of human biological variation that can shed light on our evolutionary history as well as the etiology of human disease. DNA methylation is the most commonly studied type of epigenetic modification and can alter gene expression without changing the underlying DNA sequence. DNA methylation occurs throug...
OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: The TL1 Team approach aims to train translational investigators capable of tackling complex and multifaceted diseases, such as hypertension, by beginning multidisciplinary, team-based training early in their graduate programs. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Leanne Dumeny is a graduate student in Genetics and Genomics studying h...
Objectives:
Early life stress is known to have enduring biological effects, particularly with respect to health. Epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation, are a possible mechanism to mediate the biological effect of stress. We previously found correlations between maternal stress, newborn birthweight, and genome-wide measures of DNA methy...
Maternal stress has been linked to low birth weight in newborns. One potential pathway involves epigenetic changes at candidate genes that may mediate the effects of prenatal maternal stress on birth weight. This relationship has been documented in stress-related genes, such as NR3C1 . There is less literature exploring the effect of stress on grow...
Objectives:
The Northern Dispersal Route (NDR) and Southern Dispersal Route (SDR) are hypothesized to have been used by modern humans in the dispersal out of Africa. The NDR follows the Nile into Northeast Africa and crosses the Red Sea into the Levant. The SDR emerges from the Horn of Africa and crosses the Bab el-Mandeb into southern Arabia. In...
Background
The BDNF gene codes for brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a growth factor involved in neural development, cell differentiation, and synaptic plasticity. Present in both the brain and periphery, BDNF plays critical roles throughout the body and is essential for placental and fetal development. Rodent studies show that early life stress,...
Association between maternal stress and telomere length in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
Peter H. Rej1,2, Nicole C. Rodney1,2, Darlene A. Kertes2,3, Connie J. Mulligan1,2
1Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, 2Genetics Institute, University of Florida, 3Department of Psychology, University of Florida
Telomeres stabil...
Spinocerebellar ataxia type 10 (SCA10), an autosomal dominant cerebellar ataxia disorder, is caused by a non-coding ATTCT microsatellite repeat expansion in the ataxin 10 gene. In a subset of SCA10 families, the 5’-end of the repeat expansion contains a complex sequence of penta- and heptanucleotide interruption motifs which is followed by a pure t...
Interruption alleles of SCA10 expansions.
For each individual, the number of ATTCT repeats in each of the variable regions (alpha through eta) are given. Region theta is not included as this region cannot be completely characterized. The nomenclature of each individual corresponds with the pedigrees in Fig 1D. Expansions sizes are given in the numb...
Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from C-III-4 using sequencing primer L1Fh.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from C-II-2 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from C-II-2 using sequencing primer L1Fh.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from C-III-1 using sequencing primer L1Fh.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from C-III-2 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from C-III-2 using sequencing primer L1Fh.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from C-III-3 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from C-III-5 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from M-II-1 using sequencing primer L1Fh.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from N-II-2 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from Z-III-4 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from Z-IV-2 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from Z-IV-4 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from C-III-3 using sequencing primer L1Fh.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from C-III-4 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from M-II-3 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from Z-III-1 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from Z-III-3 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from Z-IV-1 using sequencing primer L1Fh.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from Z-IV-2 using sequencing primer L1Fh.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from Z-IV-3 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from C-III-1 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from C-IV-1 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from M-II-1 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from M-II-2 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from N-II-1 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from N-II-2 using sequencing primer L1Fh.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from Z-III-2 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from Z-III-4 using sequencing primer L1Fh.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from Z-III-6 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from Z-III-8 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from C-III-5 using sequencing primer L1Fh.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from M-II-3 using sequencing primer L1Fh.
(SCF)
Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from M-II-4 using sequencing primer LP-L.
(SCF)
Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from N-II-1 using sequencing primer L1Fh.
(SCF)
Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from N-III-1 using sequencing primer LP-L.
(SCF)
Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from Z-III-1 using sequencing primer L1Fh.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from Z-III-7 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from Z-IV-1 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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Sanger sequencing trace data of the ATCCT-PCR product from Z-IV-5 using sequencing primer LP-L.
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The current model for peopling of the Americas involves divergence from an ancestral Asian population followed by a period of population isolation and genetic diversification in Beringia, and finally, a rapid expansion into and throughout the Americas. Studies in the 1970s sought to characterize the biological relationships between different indige...
Sequencing of the human genome and decades of genetic association and linkage studies have dramatically improved our understanding of the etiology of many diseases. However, the multiple causes of complex diseases are still not well understood, in part because genetic and sociocultural risk factors are not typically investigated concurrently. Hyper...
Association between BP and covariates.
(PDF)
Manhattan plot of frequentist admixture mapping for A) SBP and B) DBP. Each association is plotted based on its chromosomal position (x-axis) and its significance (-log10 (pval) plotted on the y-axis). The threshold for significance was set to -log10 (pval) = 3.20 (dashed line). Manhattan plot of frequentist association mapping for C) SBP and D) DB...
Significant SNPs associated with DBP identified from the joint ancestry and association analysis.
(Expanded version of Table 3).
(PDF)
SNP x UT-Other Low/High interactions.
A) Bayesian Manhattan plot for joint ancestry and association testing with SBP for Model 3 that tests for interactions between SNP and UT-Other Low/High. The y-axis indicates the posterior probability that a locus affects BP. The dashed line indicates the threshold for genome-wide significance (posterior probab...
SNP x UT-Other interaction effects associated with BP appear to be sex dependent.
A-C) Association between SNPs in the CYP19A1 gene are associated with BP in a sex dependent manner. BP levels are shown on the y-axis and SNP genotypes are plotted on the x-axis. Individuals are colored by sex. D-I) Association between UT-Other Low/High and BP are dep...
Significant SNPs associated with SBP identified from the joint ancestry and association analysis (Expanded version of Table 2).
(PDF)
R code for the admixture mapping, association mapping, joint analyses and simulation analyses.
(DOCX)
The field of social and behavioral epigenetics examines the role of epigenetic modifications to mediate the effect of psychosocial stressors on an individual’s health and well-being. Epigenetic modifications influence gene expression, which can lead to changes in an individual’s phenotype. DNA methylation is an important epigenetic modification tha...