About Bill Sullivan
Bill Sullivan is a Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology & Toxicology and Microbiology & Immunology at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, where his lab studies the regulation of gene expression in protozoan pathogens. He has published over 50 research papers in peer-reviewed journals, as well as articles for Scientific American MIND, ASBMB Today, Bitesize Bio, The Postdoc Way, and BuzzFeed. He is also a frequent contributor to THE SCOPE, a pop culture science blog. Learn more about his research at www.sullivanlab.com and follow him on Twitter and Google+.

Epigenetics: Feeding the Obesity and Diabetes Epidemic?

March 21, 2016 Bill Sullivan

Every kid reaching for the junk food has heard mom and dad’s warning, “You are what you eat!” But parents should be advised that children can now offer a humbling retort, “No, I’m what YOU ate!” A new study by scientists from the Institute of Experimental Genetics at Helmholtz Zentrum München (Neuherberg, Germany) suggests that the metabolic consequences of mom and dad’s dietary habits can be inherited by their kids via epigenetic mechanisms. So in addition to inheriting a genetic [more…]

Can An Infection Alter Your Epigenome?

May 5, 2015 Bill Sullivan

There are many examples of infectious agents that are capable of modifying the behavior of their host organism. Pathogens typically co-opt their host in ways that create an opportunity to spread into another host. For example, the rabies virus is transmitted through saliva, so the virus transforms its host into an unusually aggressive beast that is prone to bite other animals. The single-celled parasite known as Toxoplasma gondii is another clever puppeteer of its host. Rodents infected with this microbe [more…]

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