April 2022
Yi Athena Ren, assistant professor of Animal Science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, is one of the 2022 recipients of the Schwartz Award, receiving $25,000 towards her research.
The funds are made possible through support from Joan Poyner Schwartz ’65 and Ronald H. Schwartz ’65, who were both chemistry majors in the College of Arts and Sciences. They had long careers at the National Institutes of Health with legacies of promoting the work and careers of women in the life sciences.
Ren will use her award to identify epigenetic markers that have the potential to predict reproductive performance in dairy cows. This research could have a big impact on the dairy industry because more than half of current breeding efforts fail to result in the live birth of a calf.
Epigenetics is a layer of regulation for biological traits that often depends on the underlying genetic features, but also has its own system of operation. Epigenetic markers can be established early in life and stay stable for years – such markers with a high level of variation between individuals, coupled with machine learning, were applied recently to predict schizophrenia in humans.
“It’s not just limited to reproduction,” Ren said. “Our findings could also be used to predict other biological traits in dairy cattle, and our approach can be applied to other domestic animals, such as beef cattle. I appreciate the support from the Schwartz award because it enables us to jump-start this line of research in agricultural animal biology.”
