Special Lecture – Amy Boddy PhD

Amy Boddy PhD will be giving a special invited lecture for Joe Alcock’s evolutionary medicine class and the UNM community. Dr. Boddy studies evolutionary applications of human health and disease, using genomics, computational biology and evolutionary theory. Her recent work has focused on cooperation and conflict in pregnancy and cancer.  She will share her work on fetal microchimerism – the invasion of fetal cells into the maternal body – next Tuesday.

Date: Tuesday October 25th, Time: 5:30pm

Location: Main Campus, Castetter (Biology) room 107.

Title: Fetal microchimerism in pregnancy and maternal health

Amy Boddy PhD is an Assistant Research Professor at the Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University. Dr. Boddy received a Ph.D in Molecular Biology & Genetics from Wayne State University, School of Medicine in 2013.

Dr. Boddy’s work on fetal microchimerism was covered by Carl Zimmer in the New York Times in September 2015. Zimmer writes of pregnant women:

“But male cells were present in every organ that the scientists studied: brains, hearts, kidneys and others.”

A Pregnancy Souvenir: Cells That Are Not Your Own. A video abstract describing her recent Bioessays review on fetal microchimerism and maternal health is here: Super Chimera.

Read:

1. Boddy, Amy M., et al. “Fetal microchimerism and maternal health: A review and evolutionary analysis of cooperation and conflict beyond the womb.” Bioessays 37.10 (2015): 1106-1118.
2. Haig D. Genetic Conflicts in Pregnancy. Quarterly Review of biology. Volume 68(4). Dec 1993, 495‐532.

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Joe Alcock

Emergency Physician, Educator, Researcher, interested in the microbiome, evolution, and medicine