Course Description: 

Teratology is the study of birth defects and their causes and includes investigations pertaining to both structural and functional abnormalities. About 2-3% of live born infants have detectable congenital malformations at birth; the incidence often doubles by the end of the first year of life due to the discovery of abnormalities which were indiscernible at birth. These figures still do not account for the interuterine growth retardation and prenatal deaths. Like carcinogenesis, teratogenesis involves complex interactions between the genome and environment of an individual. This course will explore these interactions as they pertain to the pregnant mother and fetus, integrating information regarding causal signals of abnormal development thethe transduction of these signals into a teratogenic lesion and the genes which are likely to be determining factors in abnormal embryonic development. It will also encompass a unit on applied tetrology fron the perspective of pharmaceutical testing to determine how human teratogens are discovered.