This application seeks support to continue a successful and long-standing predoctoral training program in Cellular and Molecular Biology. The proposed program will provide multidisciplinary training for 16 predoctoral students. The training program has evolved over the past 30 years to provide a curriculum that offers both breadth and depth in the area of cellular and molecular biology. Graduate training at Cornell University is administered by Graduate Fields that provide the flexibility of having faculty participation from multiple departments. The Graduate Field of Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology, which administers this training grant, includes 46 faculty members who represent eleven undergraduate Departments. Thus, a major asset of this program is the large core of highly qualified faculty in diverse areas. These faculty members bring not only unique perspectives to training students in cellular to molecular biology but also provide the multidisciplinary perspective that contributes so effectively to solving biological problems. Students admitted to the Program will have undergraduate degrees in the biological or physical sciences. A comprehensive set of lecture and laboratory courses and laboratory rotations make up the first year, of the Program, followed by research, additional courses, and an obligatory teaching requirement during the second year. In addition to their major subject, trainees select a minor graduate subject in which they broaden their training by taking selected courses. The remaining time is devoted mainly to research, as well as to continue training through attending and presenting seminars and by association with faculty and postdoctoral fellows across the breadth of this training environment. Monitoring of the progress of students continues through the complete tenure of our students. The entire Field meets to assess the first year lab rotations and course performance, and a student's special committee meets yearly to assess progress following the student's yearly research seminar. Excellent facilities are available to the program at Cornell, providing modern research laboratories and state-of-the-art core services that include DMA sequencing, microarrays, peptide sequencing, flow cytometry, confocal microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and mass spectrometry.
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