The links between climate change and human health are becoming increasingly obvious: Pollution. Extreme weather events. Food scarcity. Pathogen spread.

Meet the University of Chicago Medicine researchers who are tackling this monumental issue, one challenge at a time.

In 2021, He and collaborators published a groundbreaking study showing that by inserting the FTO gene, which affects RNA modification, into rice, the plants grew three times more rice in the lab and 50% more rice in the field. The rice plants also grew longer roots, were better able to withstand stress from drought, and photosynthesized more efficiently. Additional experiments in potato plants yielded similar results.

Now He is the director of the Pritzker Plant Biology Center, a new space to expand his RNA modification work and the research of other scientists searching for innovative ways to promote plant growth and resilience and increase crop yield.

Were considering many layers of pathways for modulating plant growth, he said. RNA modification is one aspect, but were also looking at temperature sensing, because agriculture may have to move north as the climate warms, but northern regions will still be hit by extreme cold fronts, so well need to develop plants that can resist the cold and grow fast. We also need crop plants that can better withstand warm weather. We could even modulate photosynthesis to increase biomass and yield.

In the last several decades weve seen a huge amount of resources being put into human biology and health, and rightfully so, He said. But until now we have not paid enough attention to plant biology, and with climate change, this type of research is just as important.

She studies health disparities caused by social inequity, and wonders how they can be exacerbated by the pressures of climate change. We know that people with lower income, who are experiencing racism or violence, have much higher allostatic load than those who are not facing the same stressors, she said. That chronic activation of stress responses can increase stress hormones like cortisol, and over time that can directly impact health. Chronic stress contributes to a host of health problems, including cardiovascular disease, which is the largest contributor to the racial mortality gap.

Climate change is yet another source of inequity; those with the fewest resources and who are the most vulnerable are disproportionately affected by it, in everything from the rising cost of food to a lack of secure shelter from extreme weather events to increased risk of exposure to pollution and infectious disease.

An area of particular focus for Tung is the intersection between violence and health inequity. Violence is an outcome of inequity, she said. More than medical and mental healthcare, patients who are affected by violent injury will often say they need access to economic and legal resources. For example, eviction can be equally or more toxic to a person than not being able to fully rehab an injured leg. The chronicity of stress related to housing instability has major downstream effects on peoples lives and wellbeing. Add to that the effects of climate change on housing, which have already exacerbated the affordable housing crisis and increased housing damage due to flooding and other natural disasters.

These climate challenges will not only exacerbate existing health inequities, but will increase the strain on an already struggling healthcare system, making it ever more difficult for those most burdened by the effects of climate change to access the resources they need to survive it. The question isnt so much whether these issues will get worse in the future, but rather, how to address it.

Theres a big movement in the health sciences to place a greater emphasis on the social determinants of health, but this is an existential issue, said Tung. Most of the solutions currently available to us rely on addressing the specific needs of an individual person or patient, but they dont provide opportunities for systemic change. If wealth inequality continues to worsen, it will become even more difficult to sustain the services that we are able to offer. Its a never-ending cycle.

It constantly made me think about how different environments can lead to differences in our health, even when were working with a very similar genome, she said. It made me wonder how the biology works when were exposed to certain chemicals or radiation or even biological factors, like a virus. These things can put an imprint on our bodies, but we dont always know what the long-term effects will be.

Her current research focus is on understanding how exposure to UVB radiation and arsenic affect the role of RNA methylation in cancer development. She studies epitranscriptomics the modifications made to RNA that affect how and which proteins are produced within our cells.

She sees a connection between her work and climate change because it all comes back to one thing: human decisions. Climate change and pollution are deeply connected, He said. The chemicals we make and release into the atmosphere are a huge contributor to climate change. Humans are very innovative. However, we humans also create these unexpected and unintended consequences, but because it takes years for the toxic response to appear, we dont realize it right away.

Perhaps the most obvious connection between her work and climate change is one that has been mostly successfully addressed by policy change. Those who grew up in the 1990s likely remember learning about the hole in the ozone layer, caused by human use of chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons. Ozone layer depletion allows more UVB rays to reach the planets surface, affecting everything from agriculture to marine ecosystems to cancer rates in humans. Thanks to international agreements reducing the use of chlorofluorocarbons in the 1980s, the ozone hole is slowly shrinking; but in the meantime, its effects still remain.

One of the challenges He faces is determining which RNA changes are significant. Weve seen RNA modifications in response to UV stress a few times, but we dont really know what the implication of that is, she said. There are classical responses, such as DNA damage, but epitranscriptomics is still in its infantry. We are probably one of the few groups looking at the unique connection between epitranscriptomics and the environment, which is helping us understand how dysfunction in the machinery caused by environmental exposures contributes to diseases.

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Searching for solutions to the impacts of climate change on human ... - UChicago Medicine