Competitive renewal is sought for a training program trains interdisciplinary scholars who can advance and apply the concepts and methods of quantitative and molecular genetics to problems of health-related and functional behaviors in late adulthood and old age. The unique strength of the program lies in its integration of disparate research perspectives and strategies needed to investigate the complexities of variability in behavioral traits in the elderly. These perspectives include quantitative and molecular genetics, reductionist and integrationist approaches to modeling complex traits, measurements of genotypic and environmental influences, biology and behavior, demographic and biological influences of stress, human and animal research, and experimental and epidemiological approaches. Predoctoral trainees will pursue doctoral degrees in Biobehavioral Health, Human Development and Family Studies, Sociology, or Genetics. Students will be engaged actively in genetic research throughout their training, beginning with rotation through diverse laboratories including molecular genetics, quantitative modeling, a barrier facility or conventional mouse lab, demography research lab, or gene expression lab in addition to intensive continuous research in a specific area of emphasis. Students will enroll in a course on behavior genetics of age-related phenotypes in which a complete research project will be undertaken. They will participate in a weekly seminar on ethics or current issues throughout their training. Rich opportunities are available for quantitative and molecular genetics of complex age-related traits in both human subjects and animal models. Facilities and resources include several twin and population-based studies of elderly individuals;large-scale mouse studies focusing on QTL analysis of age-related phenotypes;extensive computational facilities for quantitative genetic model development and model-fitting;molecular genetic and gene expression facilities;and epidemiologic investigations. Postdoctoral fellows will participate in aspects of the formal training that complement their specialty training in order to train them as interdisciplinary scientists who are capable of functioning as independent scientists in a collaborative, multidisciplinary field of genetics of complex traits in an aging context. They will participate in the continuous weekly seminar on ethics and current issues. The training faculty are committed to interdisciplinary research and training with an emphasis on genetics of age-related behaviors, and have both a long history of collaboration in research and training in this area and new collaborative opportunities. The training faculty have ideal complementary expertise in the areas necessary to fulfill the interdisciplinary goals of this training program.
