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Marina Watowich
Postdoctoral Fellow
Vanderbilt University

I am an evolutionary biologist interested in (i) how environmental perturbations impact long-term health-related phenotypes and (ii) why some individuals are more resilient/susceptible to adverse conditions.

In my research, I use a combination of genomic approaches, computational techniques, and long-term observational data to understand how the environment “gets under the skin” to result in phenotypic variation.

Currently, I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Lea Lab at Vanderbilt University, where I work with several small-scale, subsistence-level populations in Kenya, Malaysia, and Bolivia.

Selected Publications

Watowich MM, Petersen RM, Brassington L, Arner AM, Rodenberg G, A/P Tan Boon Huat TBT, Tam KL, Schellenberg E, bin Mohd Sayed I, John E, Kahumbu JC, Muhoya B, Gurven M, Trumble BC, Njeru SN, Martins D, Ayroles JF, Lim YAL, Venkataraman VV, Wallace IJ, Kraft TS, Lea AJ (2026) Divergent Biological Consequences of APOE Isoforms Across Industrialized and Non-Industrial Environments. bioRxiv. 2026.02.24.706846; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.02.24.706846. Under review.

Watowich MM, Brassington L, Longtin A, Wang S, Rossow R, Reinhardt KD, Kahumbu J, Kinyua P, Lopurudoi A, Lotukoi F, Miano C, Muhoya B, Mukoma B, Huat TBT, Tam KL, Lim YAL, Martins D, Njeru SN, Ng KS, Venkataraman VV, Wallace IJ, Ayroles JF, Gurven M, Kraft TS, Lea AJ (2025) Urbanization exacerbates age-associated declines in cardiometabolic health in Turkana and Orang Asli. medRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.06.06.25329160. Under review.

Watowich MM, Arner AM, Wang S, John E, Kahumbu JC, Kinyua P, Lopurudoi A, Lotukoi F, Mwai CM, Muhoya B, Mukoma B, Tam KL, Huat TBT, Gurven M, Lim YAL, Martins D, Njeru S, Ng KS, Venkataraman VV, Wallace IJ, Ayroles JF, Kraft TS, Lea AJ. (2026) The built environment is more predictive of cardiometabolic health than other aspects of lifestyle in two rapidly transitioning Indigenous populations. Accepted to Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.08.26.24312234

Longtin A, Watowich MM, Sadoughi B, Petersen RM, Bronsan SF, Beutow K, Cai Q, Gurven MD, Highland HM, Haung Y, Kaplan H, Kraft TS, Lim YAL, Long J, Melin AD, Robertson J, Ng KS, Steiglitz J, Trumble BC, Venkataraman VV, Wallace IJ, Wu J, Snyder-Mackler N, Jones A, Bick AG, Lea AJ. (2025) Cost-effective solutions for high-throughput enzymatic DNA methylation sequencing. PLOS Genetics. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1011667.

Watowich MM, Costa CE, Chiou KL, Goldman EA, Petersen RM, Patterson S, Cayo Biobank Research Unit, Martínez MI, Sterner KN, Horvath JE, Montague MJ, Platt ML, Brent LJN, Higham JP, Lea AJ, Snyder-Mackler N. (2024) Immune gene regulation is associated with age and environmental adversity in a nonhuman primate. Molecular Ecology. https:// doi.org/10.1111/mec.17445.

Watowich MM, Chiou KL, Graves B, Montague MJ, Brent LJN, Higham JP, Horvath JE, Lu A, Martinez MI, Platt ML, Schneider-Crease IA, Lea AJ, Snyder-Mackler N. (2023). Best practices for genotype imputation from low-coverage sequencing data in natural populations. Molecular Ecology Resources. https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.13854.

Watowich MM, Chiou KL, Montague MJ, Cayo Biobank Research Unit, Simons ND, Horvath JE, Ruiz-Lambides AV, Martínez MI, Higham JP, Brent LJN, Platt ML, Noah Snyder-Mackler. (2022). Natural disaster and immunological aging in a nonhuman primate. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2121663119.