Welcome to The Bio Pod, a series of podcasts about the biology that affects us in our day to day lives. We want science to be digestible, informative and above all, exciting. 

This week we’re looking at how increased risk of obesity can be passed on from parent to child through an important process called epigenetics. Epigenetics is the decider of what genes get switched on and off in your body. We explore how this can lead to a cycle of obesity lasting generations. Prof. Karen Lillycrop has been researching epigenetics for over 15 years at the University of Southampton, and has joined us for this episode to give us some insight into her work.

Obesity statistics in the UK
NHS.uk. (2016). Obesity. [online] Available at: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/obesity/ [Accessed 2 Jan. 2019].
The epigenetic changes in paternal obesity 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26669700
Review on maternal obesity and its many effects on the offspring 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5245733/

I am a fourth year master’s student at the University of Southampton studying Biomedical Sciences. This podcast is part of a series of podcasts produced for the Science Communications (BIOL6072) module. 
Special thanks to Prof. Karen Lillycrop for taking time out of her busy schedule to take part in my interview. Her contact details and the rest of her work can be seen on https://www.southampton.ac.uk/biosci/about/staff/kal.page. 
Special thanks to Leo Barton, a third year film student at the University of Southampton, for helping out in this podcast, he can be reached at lbgb1g15@soton.ac.uk. 
Thank you to the Wessex Films committee for allowing me to use the sound equipment. 
For feedback or further information, contact me on ts9g15@soton.ac.uk. 

Media
The royalty free “Top of the World” created by tubebackr was used for the intro and outro.
REAPER audio production software was used to edit the audio files. 
Logo was drawn on the digital art software, IbisPaint X.
Some sound clips were used from EnvatoElements

Tina Shaban