The Orthodontics department’s very own Dr. Aline Petrin has been awarded a grant from the NIH (National Institute of Health) where she competed against multiple other scientists. During this process, the grant application is peer-reviewed and reviewed by the council. Dr. Petrin was awarded the grant to support research advancing the understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying nonsyndromic orofacial clefts.

Cleft lip and palate are the most common birth defect of the face; it occurs in roughly 1 in 700 births. Genetics play a large role but do not explain everything going on during development. Dr. Petrin’s research investigates what else may be contributing to cleft lip and palate. There are chemical “tags” on DNA called methylation. Methylation is a core part of epigenetics because it can silence certain genes by preventing them from producing protein. Thus, allowing genes to switch on or off during a baby’s facial development without changing the entire genetic code. Dr. Petrin’s work studies how genetic variants can raise the risk of cleft lip by changing the methylation tags instead of altering the genes. Petrin’s team utilizes CRISPR gene editing in the lab to test nine of the variants to show how they work. Dr. Petrin stated, “The goal is to move from simply knowing that certain DNA differences are linked to clefts toward understanding how they cause them, which is a crucial step toward better prediction, prevention, and eventually treatment.” This grant from the NIH allows Petrine and her team to demonstrate the mechanisms that are behind how different genetic variants can change methylation in a specific way. The grant opens doors for more in-depth genetic mapping of craniofacial abnormalities.   

This grant allows Dr. Petrin and her team to make an impact on many people’s lives by helping to answer the question that a lot of parents of children who suffer from cleft lip and palate ask: “Why did this happen?” The work done in the genetics lab will help these parents understand what is going on instead of just describing what happened. Petrin states, “Being able to walk one all the way from a dot on a plot to a real, demonstrated mechanism is the most satisfying thing I do.”  The work being done with this grant is not only important to Dr. Petrin personally, but it is also greatly impactful to the orthodontics industry. The grant allows Dr. Petrin and her team to explore epigenetics more in depth than ever before, if her team can show how cleft is related to a genetic variation of methylation and not the genetic code, it can help explain how genetics play a role in many common conditions. 

Sources: 

https://scienceinsights.org/what-is-methylation-and-how-does-it-affect-your-health/