This application requests continuing support for a training program which provides graduate students studying for the Ph.D. degree with broad state-or-the-art training in Systems and Integrative Biology. Students will learn and apply tools and approaches of genomics, bioinformatics, proteomics as well as cell and molecular biology to the study of integrated systems and organismic biology. The program is centered in the Department of Molecular &Integrative Physiology because of its longstanding commitment to integrative biology but students will enter from an initial year in a combined gateway Program in Biomedical Sciences (PIBS) and can be enrolled in multiple Ph.D. programs. Trainees will be supported for two years. The potential applicant pool is all students applying to PIBS and includes both students who come to Michigan to study integrative biology and those who enter undecided and are then drawn to integrative biology. The training includes formal coursework and seminars, teaching, and research experiences with faculty in a variety of departments at the University of Michigan. All students will take graduate level courses in Systems and Integrative Physiology, Cell Physiology, Cellular and Molecular Biology, Genetics and Biochemistry. Additional courses are selected by the student in accordance with his/her interests. The integrative approach to the study of biology is reinforced by teaching conference sections in an undergraduate physiology course. Students also participate in weekly student research seminars in which they are expected to critically evaluate the presentations of their peers. This broad training is further reinforced by each student taking a written preliminary examination at the end of the second year of study that requires an understanding of function, from the cellular and molecular level to that of the organism including interactions between the environment and the organism. A unique aspect of the proposed training is that all students will have two dissertation co-chairs, rather then the more traditional single chair, at least one of whom will be schooled in the most recent techniques in cellular and molecular biology and one being an integrative biologist. The training faculty consists of 44 outstanding scientists all of whom are expert in either cellular and molecular or systems and integrative biology and committed to training individuals to answer questions of integrative physiological relevance.
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