The Administrative Shell will coordinate and manage all activities of the PSO Core Center for the Chemical Senses. The PI of the Core Center, Dr. Robert Margolskee. and the Administrative Coordinator. Ms. Lee, will coordinate operations of the Core Center through the Administrative Shell. Specific administrative functions of the Shell include coordinating between the Core Center's Research Cores and Research Base and seeing that the Research Cores are fully utilized, that priority is granted to Research Base users, that fair use of Cores is followed, and that the Core's procedures for dispute resolution are followed. Administrative Shell personnel also are responsible for tracking Core Center expenses, monitoring chargeback costs for each Core, booking lectures and training sessions given by the Research Core Directors, scheduling meetings of the Core Center's Internal and External Advisory Boards, and assisting with making travel arrangements for the external advisors. The Monell Chemical Senses Center was founded in 1968 on the premise that basic and clinical research into the health-related impact of the chemical senses would be facilitated by having a center of excellence devoted exclusively to these topics. As a 501(C)(3) organization, Monell is headed by a Board of Directors who are legally and fiscally responsible for its operations. The Board is headed by Dr. Dwight Riskey, former Senior Vice President of PepsiCo. Among its members are two University of Pennsylvania trustees and one senior member of the University of Pennsylvania medical faculty, the President of the Monell Foundation, the CEO of AAAS, a senior executive of the Pew Charitable Trusts, and Dr. Gary Beauchamp. the Director of Monell since 1990. Monell has several advisory groups, the most important of which is the International Advisory Committee made up of distinguished individuals from academia and industry. In addition to overseeing longterm fiscal and research activities at Monell, the Board appoints the Director, who is responsible for day-to-day operations at Monell. The Director is also involved in long-term strategic planning, faculty appointments, and resource allocation. The PSO Core Center for the Chemical Senses is a natural extension of Monell's 42-year mission. The organizational structure of Monell and how the Core Center fits in is shown in Figure 1. The Shell promotes the mission of our Core Center to provide efficient technical services and educate our users in new technologies. For each Research Core, their laboratories and the offices of their Directors are within the same building, often on the same floor, and sometimes in adjacent space. The physical distances between Cores, which are in two adjacent, connected buildings (e.g.. Core 1. Histology in Monell East and Core 2. Genotyping in Monell West), are modest and can be covered in 5 minutes or less. Frequent (daily) conversations occur among all Core Directors. The Administrative Shell's role in the PSO Core Center is key to facilitate these interactions, yet the size and cost of the Administrative Shell are modest, taking up only -6% of the total direct costs of the PSO Core Center. The P30 PI and Core Center Director overseeing the Administrative Shell is Dr. Robert Margolskee. Dr. Margolskee is a world-renowned expert on the molecular mechanisms of taste signaling. His group discovered the first taste transduction protein, gustducin, as well as additional taste signaling proteins: the G-protein subunit Gyl 3, the sweet and umami taste receptor subunit Tl rS, and the Ca2+-activated cation channel TrpmS. His lab was the first to generate and utilize transgenic models in the chemical senses with studies of gustducin-null mice. His group has also generated and characterized knockout mice lacking transducin, TIrS, and Trpm5. His several seminal contributions to the taste field have been published in high-impact journals, including Nature, Science, Nature Genetics, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. Having trained in molecular genetics, molecular neurobiology, and medicine, his research program is characterized by an interdisciplinary approach utilizing biochemistry, molecular biology, transgenic mouse models, behavior, and physiology. During the past few years he has extended his studies to investigate the roles of taste-signaling proteins in endocrine responses of extra-oral tissues. His group recently demonstrated that gustducin, TIrS, and other taste elements are expressed in intestinal and pancreatic endocrine cells, where they are involved in detecting sugars and sweeteners and eliciting hormone release. Dr. Margolskee joined Monell in July of 2009 as a Member, Monell Center's highest faculty level. He is also Director of Monell's TS2 Postdoctoral Training Program. For the prior 1S years he was on the faculty of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in the Departments of Neuroscience, Pharmacology, and Physiology and Biophysics. For eight of those years he was also an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. During his 23 years as a PI, Dr. Margolskee has trained 40 pre- and postdoctoral fellows. Many of his trainees have gone on to establish themselves in academia or industry. Dr. Margolskee currently holds three ROIs, all of which are in the Research Base, and two industry-funded research grants. Dr. Margolskee has significant administrative experience: in addition to Directing Monell's T32 Postdoctoral Training Program, he has served as Co-Director of Mount Sinai's Graduate Training Area in Mechanisms of Disease and Therapy, Founder and Acting President of Linguagen/Redpoint Bio (a biotech company). Program Chair for the Association for Chemoreception Sciences annual meeting, and Co-Chair of the Gordon Conference in the Chemical Senses. Dr. Margolskee will oversee the PSO Core Center and coordinate Core personnel. He is well suited for this role based on his scientific expertise and administrative experience. His research in taste signaling and the roles of taste signaling proteins in extra-oral sites is central to the mission area of NIDCD. Dr. Margolskee has many years of direct experience and has acquired skills and knowledge in each of the technical areas covered by the four Research Cores: Histology, Genotyping, Molecular Biology, and Phenotyping. Specific examples from his work include the creation and characterization of mice null for the taste cell signaling molecules gustducin, transducin, Trpm5, and T1r3. His group has created gene constructs for conventional and conditional null mice, made transgenic mouse models, genotyped mice, localized proteins and mRNAs to subsets of taste receptors cells, done molecular biological analyses of gene products in cell culture and of genes in vivo, and carried out two-bottle preference tests, gustometer tests, gustatory nerve recording, and surgical manipulation of gustatory and gut physiology. Dr. Margolskee and all four core directors (Drs. Huang, Reed, Mosinger, and Bachmanov) talk many times a day concerning scientific and administrative matters. Drs. Huang, Reed, and Bachmanov have adjacent offices. The frequent collaboration common among Dr. Margolskee and the Research Core Directors are exemplified by the multiple co-authored publications;for instance. Dr. Margolskee has co-authored papers with each of the four Core Directors, Drs. Reed and Bachmanov have jointly authored 19 peer-reviewed papers, and Drs. Margolskee and Mosinger have jointly authored 17 papers. Because of the physical proximity and the long-standing collaborations of the Core Directors, questions or problems about Center management generally can be resolved quickly and amicably.
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