First I would like to compliment you on your great work and presentation! Really great. Secondly, I wanted to know if you normalized your data based on the differences in family income (FI) to see if, in the same stratification of FI these methylation differences persisted between the groups. We know that socioeconomical differences impact in what the mother eats and their level of stress during pregnancy, which could have an effect in DNA methylation regardless of birth term. 

Thanks for your amazing talk and results! I have some questions, as follows: 1) Given the temporal changes in CpG methylation you observed, have you assessed whether these epigenetic modifications also happen at the transcriptional or protein level of SLC6A4 to establish functional consequences beyond methylation signatures? In addition, did you explore whether the CpG-specific methylation differences cluster within known transcription factor binding sites or regulatory motifs of the SLC6A4 promoter, and could these site-specific changes differentially impact serotonin transporter regulation? 2) How do you distinguished methylation changes due to prematurity itself from those potentially driven by external perinatal stressors (e.g., oxygen therapy, corticosteroids, NICU handling, maternal stress), and have you controlled for these in your analyses? 3) From a translational perspective, do you envision that SLC6A4 methylation profiling at birth could serve as a biomarker for identifying preterm infants at higher risk of later neurodevelopmental disorders, and what are the ethical implications of early-life epigenetic risk stratification in neonatology? Thanks and congrats again!