Connie Mulligan
· Professor, Anthropology College Diversity RepresentativeUniversity of Florida · Toxicology and Pharmacology
Active 2003–2026
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About
Connie J. Mulligan, Ph.D., uses molecular genetic data to investigate questions about human health and disease, taking an interdisciplinary perspective on evolution and health. Her research focuses on the impact of childhood adversity and the basis of racial health disparities. Since 2008, she has been investigating the genetic and cultural risk factors for hypertension in African Americans living in Tallahassee, FL, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Florida and Anthropology. Her work explores the basis of racial disparities in hypertension, incorporating estimates of genetic ancestry, allele frequencies, measures of discrimination, and personal social networks, revealing significant interactions between genetic variants and sociocultural factors. Since 2010, she has studied the effects of violence and stress on mothers in the Democratic Republic of Congo and their newborns, focusing on epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation that may mediate fetal programming. Her ongoing studies include gene expression analysis and longitudinal health assessments of children. In 2016, she began a collaboration with researchers from Yale and Jordan to investigate risk and resilience in Syrian refugees, examining genetic and epigenetic variants that influence responses to trauma and their potential transmission to future generations. Her work in this area was reported in Science in 2018, under the title 'Lessons in Resilience.'
Research topics
- Computer Science
- Sociology
- Biology
- Political Science
- Data science
- Psychology
- Gender studies
- Anthropology
- Psychiatry
- Genetics
Selected publications
The model student: GPT-4 performance on graduate biomedical science exams
Scientific Reports · 2024-03-07 · 51 citations
articleOpen accessThe GPT-4 large language model (LLM) and ChatGPT chatbot have emerged as accessible and capable tools for generating English-language text in a variety of formats. GPT-4 has previously performed well when applied to questions from multiple standardized examinations. However, further evaluation of trustworthiness and accuracy of GPT-4 responses across various knowledge domains is essential before its use as a reference resource. Here, we assess GPT-4 performance on nine graduate-level examination…
Systemic racism can get under our skin and into our genes
American Journal of Physical Anthropology · 2021 · 39 citations
1st authorCorrespondingSpecial Issue - Race reconciled II: Interpreting and communicating biological variation and race in 2021 Many sociocultural factors, like poverty and trauma, or homelessness versus a safe neighborhood, can get "under our skin" and affect our lives. These factors may also get "into our genes" through epigenetic changes that influence how genes are expressed. Changes in gene expression can further influence how we respond to sociocultural factors and how those factors impact our physical and menta…
Scientific Reports · 2025-02-27 · 31 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingMaternal trauma influences infant and adult health outcomes and may impact future generations through epigenetic modifications such as DNA methylation (DNAm). Research in humans on the intergenerational epigenetic transmission of trauma effects is limited. In this study, we assessed DNAm signatures of war-related violence by comparing germline, prenatal, and direct exposures to violence across three generations of Syrian refugees. We compared families in which a pregnant grandmother versus a pre…
Data sharing in biological anthropology
American Journal of Physical Anthropology · 2022 · 28 citations
1st authorCorrespondingAbstract Open data sharing democratizes science by making data more equitably available throughout the world. Furthermore, open data sharing improves the reproducibility and quality of research and enables new collaborations powered by the freely available data. Open data are defined as data that can be freely used, reused, and redistributed by anyone. For an interdisciplinary field like biological anthropology, data sharing is critical since one person cannot easily collect data across the doma…
Epigenetics · 2023-06-10 · 25 citations
articleOpen accessSenior authorCorrespondingPrenatal maternal stress has a negative impact on child health but the mechanisms through which maternal stress affects child health are unclear. Epigenetic variation, such as DNA methylation, is a likely mechanistic candidate as DNA methylation is sensitive to environmental insults and can regulate long-term changes in gene expression. We recruited 155 mother-newborn dyads in the Democratic Republic of Congo to investigate the effects of maternal stress on DNA methylation in mothers and newborn…
Recent grants
NSF · $353k · 2012–2016
NSF · $499k · 2017–2022
NSF · $323k · 2005–2011
Frequent coauthors
- 25 shared
Clarence C. Gravlee
University of Florida
- 20 shared
Christopher J. Clukay
University of Florida
- 18 shared
David Goldman
National Institutes of Health
- 17 shared
Rebecca Gray
Saint Luke's Hospital
- 17 shared
Alex B. Wang
McGill University
- 17 shared
Mary‐Anne Enoch
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
- 16 shared
Matti Virkkunen
University of Helsinki
- 16 shared
Darlene A. Kertes
University of Florida
Education
M.Phil., Ph.D., Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry
Yale University
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