Bio Science Facility Core (BSFC) ABSTRACT A major goal of the Texas A&M Center for Environmental Health Research (TiCER) is to evaluate the effects of toxicological agents present in the environment on target populations. The ability to quantify biological effects of different exposures is critical to understanding and interpreting the health impact of environmental exposures. The Bio Science Facility Core (BSFC) will provide Center members access to key enabling technologies and expertise to support the vision of the Center ?Enhancing Public Health by Identifying, Understanding and Reducing Adverse Environmental Health Risks.? This will be accomplished by providing access to state-of-the- art analytical technology, infrastructure, and expertise to perform mechanistic research on environmental factors that impact human health and disease. The BSFC will integrate imaging, molecular, and physiological phenotyping capabilities, which are currently distributed across the Texas A&M campus, to support multi-scale research into the underlying mechanisms of environmental health risks, from single cells and organoids to experimental animal populations. The BSFC will achieve this goal by: (1) Maintaining a wide range of state-of- the-art technologies and expertise to enhance environmental health research integration and translation; (2) Providing subsidized and prioritized access to expertise with analytical technologies through training, consulting services, applications development, and mentoring; and (3) Facilitating translational research activities to enhance the capacity, breadth, collaborative nature, and impact of environmental health research. The BSFC will provide expertise and analytical equipment to measure a continuum of phenotypic readouts ranging from the single-cell level to population-scale models. The leaders of the BSFC have an established track record of collaborative, interdisciplinary, and translational research, and are well positioned to facilitate the technology needs of Center members to increase research efficiency and facilitate sharing of experimental procedures.
