Professional Profile
Ms. Morgan Jacobellis is a toxicologist in ToxStrategies’ Health Sciences practice. She has assisted in research understanding potential relationships between ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and adverse health outcomes. As part of this research, Ms. Jacobellis has evaluated the current regulatory and scientific landscape for UPFs by developing and performing structured literature searches and reviews across several scientific literature databases and agency websites.
Currently, Ms. Jacobellis is also in the process of earning her M.S. in Environmental Toxicology from Clemson University. Her thesis research investigates the effects of persistent organic pollutant mixtures on metabolic health, particularly in childhood obesity. Ms. Jacobellis has experience evaluating effects of mixtures in vitro to elucidate mechanisms of metabolic toxicity. She has performed cell viability assays, transactivation reporter assays for the PPAR nuclear receptor family, as well as Mitochondrial Stress Tests in HepG2 and C2C12 cells.
Ms. Jacobellis also has experience using in vivo ecological models to examine the effects of herbicide exposure on invertebrate behavior and regeneration rate, as well as experience using computational tools such as Blast, Phytozome, Cytoscape, PaperBlast, EFI Enzyme Similarity Tool, Muscle, UniPort, and iTol for functional annotations. Additionally, she has used statistical analysis programs such as StatPlus and GraphPad Prism to analyze data sets.
Ms. Jacobellis has presented her research at both regional and national scientific meetings and has reported her results in peer-reviewed journals. She has facilitated lectures and discussions for undergraduate courses in biology and environmental sustainability.