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The Jordan College of Agricultural Sciences and Technology

Jessica Townsend Graybeal

Assistant Professor

Animal Sciences and Agricultural Education

jgraybeal@csufresno.edu

Education

  • B.S. - Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
  • Ph.D. - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Courses Taught

Joining the campus as an assistant professor in the fall of 2025, Dr. Townsend Graybeal brings a wide background of working with animal science students and industry members to Fresno State's dairy science program, including laboratory and research work in the areas of genetics in both sheep and cattle studies at her prior universities.

While completing her post-graduate degrees at Madison, she published research on pregnancy-related genes in cattle and sperm DNA methylation, embryo transcriptome, seminal plasma miRNA and proteome in sheep. She assisted in additional lab work and data collection in sheep and cattle research studies both there and at San Luis Obispo.

At Wisconsin, she also helped teach veterinary genetics classes and related lab techniques, and served as a mentor for graduate students and undergraduate animal and dairy science students.
Research Publications

Townsend J, Braz CU, Taylor T, Khatib H. Effects of paternal methionine supplementation on sperm DNA methylation and embryo transcriptome in sheep. Environ Epigenet. 2022 ;9(1):dvac029. doi: 10.1093/eep/dvac029.

Braz, C. U., Taylor, T., Namous, H., Townsend, J., Crenshaw, T., & Khatib, H. Paternal diet induces transgenerational epigenetic inheritance of DNA methylation signatures and phenotypes in sheep model. PNAS nexus 2022 1(2), pgac040. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac040.

Khatib H, Townsend J, Konkel MA, Conidi G, Hasselkus JA.. Calling the question: what is mammalian transgenerational epigenetic inheritance? Epigenetics 2024 19(1):2333586. doi: 10.1080/15592294.2024.2333586

Townsend J, Gross N, Peng Z, Peñagaricano F, Yang Z, Ahsan N, Khatib H. The embryonic DPPA3 gene stimulates the expression of pregnancy-related genes in bovine endometrial cells (In Review)


Townsend J, Kizilaslan M, Peng Z, Taylor T, Yang Z, Ahsan N, Khatib H. Effects of methionine supplementation on seminal plasma miRNAs and proteome in sheep (In Preparation)


Townsend J, Kizilaslan M, Taylor T, Khatib H. Effects of maternal methionine supplementation on oocyte and embryo DNA methylation in sheep (In Preparation)