This application proposes a pre-doctoral training program in Molecular Biology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. We define Molecular Biology in a broad senses. Our 33 training faculty represent a broad range of scientific disciplines including cell cycle control and signaling, transcriptional regulation and splicing, protein sorting, DNA replication, macromolecular structure, nucleic acid/chromatin structure and function, virology, bacteriology, genomics, neurobiology, developmental biology and cell biology. Our faculty take approaches ranging from physical biochemistry and mechanistic enzymology to recombinant DNA technology, genetics and cell biology. These diverse disciplines and approaches are unified by use of molecular approaches to address fundamental questions of biology. The proposed training program proposes to support particularly promising students during the initial two years of training-the first year devoted to course work and research rotations and the second devoted to the first year of thesis research culminating in the comprehensive (PhD candidacy) exam. We expect the total training period for our students to be 4-5 years. The program takes a student-centered approach, being adaptable to meet individual student needs. We recognize that the most important goal of the entire experience is to prepare our graduates for an independent, creative research career. To accomplish this, we emphasize approaches that prepare students for lifelong learning, enabling them to be able to identify relevant questions in important areas, to critically assess the literature in a field, to design well-controlled experiments, and to be able to critically evaluate the results. We also recognize that, in addition to knowing how to perform good science, our graduates must be able to communicate the excitement and importance of their results to others. Thus, we emphasize scientific communication skills in our training.
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