University of Texas Austin - Finnell Lab

Welcome to the Finnell Lab!

Research in Dr. Finnell's laboratory focuses on genetic susceptibility to environmentally-induced complex congenital anomalies. Both genetically modified mouse models and population based human studies are utilized.
The mice are great tools for developing and actually testing hypotheses about environmental factors that cause birth defects. But the ultimate test of whether something causes human infants to be born with abnormalities must ultimately be tested in human populations. Thus, we have extensive collaborations with the National Birth Defect Prevention Study (funded by the CDC) of which our laboratory processes the DNA samples from Texas, California, and Massachusetts, we have ongoing field studies in Northern China, and now we are able to work with families from Central Texas at the Dell Children’s Medical Center to provide direct, translational studies to help families reach their reproductive goals and hopefully prevent, preventable birth defects.