# Oliver Rando
Oliver J. Rando is a molecular biologist, MD, PhD, and Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, where he holds an endowed chair and leads a laboratory that studies how epigenetic inheritance programs health and disease.[1](https://www.umassmed.edu/randolab/the-lab/the-pi/) He is known for work on chromatin (DNA packaged with proteins inside cells) inheritance and for experiments showing that a father's diet can alter metabolism in his offspring, a finding reported in *Cell* in 2010.[2](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(10)01426-1)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Field | Epigenetics and chromatin biology, molecular and cell biology |
| Position | Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biotechnology, UMass Chan Medical School; endowed chair holder[1](https://www.umassmed.edu/randolab/the-lab/the-pi/) |
| Training | Undergraduate with Tom Maniatis (Harvard); MD/PhD with Gerald Crabtree (Stanford); Bauer Fellow at Harvard; joined UMass Chan in 2007[1](https://www.umassmed.edu/randolab/the-lab/the-pi/) • [3](https://rupress.org/jcb/article/177/6/948/34647/Oliver-Rando-Taking-chromatin-analysis-to-the) |
| Signature work | "Paternally Induced Transgenerational Environmental Reprogramming of Metabolic Gene Expression in Mammals" (*Cell*, 2010)[2](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(10)01426-1); ["Biogenesis and function of tRNA fragments during sperm maturation and fertilization in mammals"](https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aad6780), *Science*, 2015 |
| Recognition | Blavatnik National Awards national finalist, 2016; fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, 2015 |[4](https://www.umassmed.edu/news/news-archives/2016/06/oliver-rando-named-national-finalist-for-blavatnik-national-awards-for-young-scientists/) • [5](https://grantome.com/grant/NIH/DP1-ES025458-01)
| Current focus | Sperm-borne small RNAs in paternal dietary effects; yeast chromatin architecture |
## Education and career
Rando was an undergraduate researcher in [Tom Maniatis](https://www.edgepedia.org/tom-maniatis)' laboratory at Harvard, where he worked on the role of the proteasome in activation of NF-kB. He then completed an MD/PhD at Stanford in Gerald Crabtree's laboratory, studying chromatin remodeling and [T cell](https://www.edgepedia.org/t-cell) activation.[1](https://www.umassmed.edu/randolab/the-lab/the-pi/) His independent career began as a Bauer Fellow at Harvard's Institute for Chemical Biology, a five-year position that gave him principal investigator rights and funding for a laboratory of three people; according to a 2007 *Journal of Cell Biology* profile, there he developed genome-wide microarray approaches to chromatin structure and began work on both chromatin function in budding yeast and paternal dietary effects in mice.[1](https://www.umassmed.edu/randolab/the-lab/the-pi/) • [3](https://rupress.org/jcb/article/177/6/948/34647/Oliver-Rando-Taking-chromatin-analysis-to-the) • [6](https://crablab.stanford.edu/people/ollie-rando/)
He joined the [University of Massachusetts](https://www.edgepedia.org/university-of-massachusetts) faculty as an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology in 2007; according to his lab's page at [UMass Chan Medical School](https://www.edgepedia.org/umass-chan-medical-school), the department is now [Biochemistry](https://www.edgepedia.org/biochemistry) & Molecular Biotechnology, and his laboratory has since worked on gene regulation, chromatin architecture, epigenetic inheritance, and reproductive biology.[1](https://www.umassmed.edu/randolab/the-lab/the-pi/)
## Research: paternal effects and chromatin inheritance
The Rando laboratory's best-known experiment asked whether a father's environment could change his children's physiology without any change to DNA sequence. In the 2010 *Cell* study, offspring of male mice fed a [low-protein diet](https://www.edgepedia.org/low-protein-diet) were compared with offspring of males fed a control diet. Offspring of the low-protein fathers showed elevated hepatic expression of genes involved in lipid and cholesterol biosynthesis and decreased levels of cholesterol esters relative to offspring of control-fed males.[2](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(10)01426-1) Epigenomic profiling of offspring livers found numerous modest, roughly 20 percent changes in cytosine methylation depending on paternal diet, including reproducible changes over a likely enhancer for the lipid regulator *Ppara*. In sperm themselves, however, methylation patterns were largely conserved across dietary regimes, and no paternal-diet effect was seen at the *Ppara* enhancer locus, so the sperm mark did not simply mirror the offspring mark.[2](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(10)01426-1)
Three candidate carriers of paternal memory have framed the field since: cytosine methylation, chromatin structure, and RNA.
The laboratory's second strand, begun in the Bauer Fellow years, maps chromatin structure in budding yeast at genomic scale, including nucleosome positioning and nucleosome-resolution chromosome folding.[3](https://rupress.org/jcb/article/177/6/948/34647/Oliver-Rando-Taking-chromatin-analysis-to-the)
## Representative work
The 2010 *Cell* research article "Paternally Induced Transgenerational Environmental Reprogramming of Metabolic Gene Expression in Mammals" ([doi:10.1016/j.cell.2010.12.008](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2010.12.008)) established the paternal low-protein diet paradigm and the accompanying offspring methylation changes, with Rando as corresponding author.[2](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(10)01426-1) According to a 2015 *Cell* review, "I'm Eating for Two: Parental Dietary Effects on Offspring Metabolism", parental diet influences metabolic phenotype in mammals, and both human and animal studies demonstrate intergenerational transmission of the maternal or paternal phenotype.[8](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4465102/)
## How paternal effects compare with maternal effects
Paternal-effect designs carry a methodological advantage that the 2010 paper itself emphasized: maternal effects are difficult to separate from direct effects of in utero environmental exposure on offspring, whereas a father contributes little beyond sperm, so a paternal signal points to something carried in the gamete rather than to shared gestational environment.[2](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(10)01426-1)
## Recognition and funding
In 2016 Rando was named one of about 25 national finalists for the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists, selected from roughly 250 nominations of faculty-rank researchers at some 120 institutions and competing in Life Sciences for $250,000 laureate prizes.[4](https://www.umassmed.edu/news/news-archives/2016/06/oliver-rando-named-national-finalist-for-blavatnik-national-awards-for-young-scientists/) In 2015 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.[4](https://www.umassmed.edu/news/news-archives/2016/06/oliver-rando-named-national-finalist-for-blavatnik-national-awards-for-young-scientists/) His NIH Director's Pioneer Award, "tRNA fragments as transgenerational information carriers" (DP1-ES025458, [National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences](https://www.edgepedia.org/national-institute-of-environmental-health-sciences)), ran from September 2014 to July 2019.[5](https://grantome.com/grant/NIH/DP1-ES025458-01)
## Recent work and mechanism disputes (2024–2026)
A 2026 *PNAS* paper challenged the account of Rando's laboratory, in which sperm-borne small RNAs mediate paternal dietary effects acquired during epididymal transit, reporting that mature murine sperm are effectively devoid of mtDNA, which would preclude mtDNA-dependent transcription during epididymal transit, and arguing that the sperm-borne signal originates in the testis rather than in epididymal exposure.[10](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2611096123) The question of whether the sperm-borne signal originates in the testis or in epididymal exposure remains unresolved.
## References
1. Rando Lab | The PI, UMass Chan Medical School. https://www.umassmed.edu/randolab/the-lab/the-pi/
2. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(10)01426-1
3. Oliver Rando: Taking chromatin analysis to the genomic scale (*Journal of Cell Biology*, 2007). https://rupress.org/jcb/article/177/6/948/34647/Oliver-Rando-Taking-chromatin-analysis-to-the
4. Oliver Rando named national finalist for Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists (UMass Medical School news, 2016). https://www.umassmed.edu/news/news-archives/2016/06/oliver-rando-named-national-finalist-for-blavatnik-national-awards-for-young-scientists/
5. tRNA fragments as transgenerational information carriers, NIH DP1-ES025458. https://grantome.com/grant/NIH/DP1-ES025458-01
6. Ollie Rando, Crabtree Laboratory, Stanford. https://crablab.stanford.edu/people/ollie-rando/
7. Sperm tsRNAs contribute to intergenerational inheritance of an acquired metabolic disorder (*Science*, 2016). https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aad7977
8. I'm eating for two: parental dietary effects on offspring metabolism (*Cell*, 2015). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4465102/
9. Epigenetic inheritance of diet-induced and sperm-borne mitochondrial RNAs (*Nature*, 2024). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07472-3
10. Testicular origin of epigenetic inheritance independent of sperm mitochondrial DNA and epididymal exposure (*PNAS*, 2026). https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2611096123
11. A Conversation with Oliver Rando (Cold Spring Harbor Symposia). https://symposium.cshlp.org/content/84/288.full
12. Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance: a critical perspective (*Frontiers in Epigenetics and Epigenomics*, 2024). https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/epigenetics-and-epigenomics/articles/10.3389/freae.2024.1434253/full
13. A critical view on transgenerational epigenetic inheritance in humans (*Nature Communications*, 2018). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05445-5
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Life and health › Life and health scientists › Life scientists › Researchers in molecular and cell biology › Epigenetics and chromatin biology › DNA methylation and epigenetic inheritance*
*Initially written Sep 20, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 25, 2026; Oct 11, 2026 · Last review: Sep 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license