School of Medical Diagnostic and Translational Sciences

Course will cover basic concepts of molecular biology including nucleic acids, chromosomes, DNA replication, transcription, and translation and the role of inherited and acquired mutations in disease. The role of clinical molecular diagnostics in detection, prognosis, theranostics, and monitoring and management of patients with inherited and infectious diseases will be explored.

Course will cover basic molecular biology laboratory techniques including nucleic acid isolation, restriction enzyme digestion, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), quantitative reverse-transcription PCR, DNA sequencing, western blot, ELISA, and PCR-RFLP. This includes both hands on experience and lecture-based explanation of the science behind the techniques.

This course will cover the molecular pathology of various diseases including epigenetic disorders, metabolic disorders coagopathies, cardiac disease, and infectious disease. It will also focus on cutting edge areas of molecular medicine and diagnostics such as pharmacogenomics, regenerative medicine and the microbiome.

Course will cover advanced techniques and technologies in molecular diagnostics. Students will gain hands on experience in diagnostic methods using relative quantification of qRT-PCR, sequencing, and fragment analysis using capillary electrophoresis. Alternative techniques and emerging technologies such as next-generation sequencing will also be discussed.

An optional three-week supervised rotation in a hospital-based molecular diagnostic laboratory or a molecular research laboratory.

Laboratory rotation with a pre-designated faculty member in which the student obtains hands-on experience. Designed for graduate students to sample different types of research models, techniques, and subject matter without the commitment of dissertation level involvement.

This course combines a didactic survey of topics important for understanding the origin, curation, advantages, and limitations of a variety of key genomic resources with hands-on training in the proper use of widely accessed public genome resources and common bioinformatic tools.

Course goals are a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms involved in chromosome function and how aberrations in these processes contribute to human disease. Topics include DNA repair and recombination; centromere and telomere dynamics, maintenance, and function; chromosome replication and segregation; control of cell division; dynamics of chromatin structure and function; epigenetics and gene expression; and long-range chromatin interactions and genome function.

Topics to be covered include history of stem cell biology, molecular definitions for stem cell identification, methods for stem cell isolations including: adult and embryonic, current technologies for induced pluripotent stem cell reprogramming, stem cells in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, and current and future stem cell applications.

Topics to be covered include history of tissue engineering, development and morphogenesis, tissue structure, cells, scaffolds, regulators, and creating and evaluating a tissue engineering construct. Focus is on biomedical tissue engineering concepts as applied to creating human tissues in the laboratory for surgical repair of injured and diseased tissues and organs.

The goals of this course are a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms involved in molecular genetics and gene function and in-depth exploration of modern experimental analyses of these processes. Topics include DNA replication, repair, and recombination; transcription; epigenetic regulation of transcription; chromatin structure, histone modifications, transcription factors, and regulatory RNAs; long-range chromatin interactions and gene regulation; post-transcriptional gene regulation and translation; molecular biology based experimental analysis of gene function; and experimental genomic approaches to gene regulation and gene function.

Course will cover molecular aspects of cancer including DNA damage, tumor viruses, cell cycle regulation, oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes and their respective roles in cancer prevention/development, genes involved in promoting or inhibiting metastasis, angiogenesis, telomeres and telomerase, regulation of both apoptosis and autophagy in normal and cancer cells, cancer stem cells, and diagnostic screening assays for therapeutic responses or resistance in cancer patients.

Emphasis is on human genetic syndromes and disorders associated with dysregulation of key signal transduction pathways that control gene expression, cell growth and protein synthesis including the Ras/MAPK pathway, tuberous sclerosis complex-mammalian target of rapamycin, PI3-kinase and others. Diagnosis, screening and treatment will be covered.

Laboratory rotation with a pre-designated faculty member in which the student obtains hands-on experience. Designed for graduate students to sample different types of research models, techniques, and subject matter without the commitment of dissertation level involvement.

This course combines a didactic survey of topics important for understanding the origin, curation, advantages, and limitations of a variety of key genomic resources with hands-on training in the proper use of widely accessed public genome resources and common bioinformatic tools.

Course goals are a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms involved in chromosome function and how aberrations in these processes contribute to human disease. Topics include DNA repair and recombination; centromere and telomere dynamics, maintenance, and function; chromosome replication and segregation; control of cell division; dynamics of chromatin structure and function; epigenetics and gene expression; and long-range chromatin interactions and genome function.

Topics to be covered include history of stem cell biology, molecular definitions for stem cell identification, methods for stem cell isolations including: adult and embryonic, current technologies for induced pluripotent stem cell reprogramming, stem cells in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, and current and future stem cell applications.

Topics to be covered include history of tissue engineering, development and morphogenesis, tissue structure, cells, scaffolds, regulators, and creating and evaluating a tissue engineering construct. Focus is on biomedical tissue engineering concepts as applied to creating human tissues in the laboratory for surgical repair of injured and diseased tissues and organs.

The goals of this course are a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms involved in molecular genetics and gene function and in-depth exploration of modern experimental analyses of these processes. Topics include DNA replication, repair, and recombination; transcription; epigenetic regulation of transcription; chromatin structure, histone modifications, transcription factors, and regulatory RNAs; long-range chromatin interactions and gene regulation; post-transcriptional gene regulation and translation; molecular biology based experimental analysis of gene function; and experimental genomic approaches to gene regulation and gene function.

Students attend seminars, attend a class on giving seminars, and present a seminar on their own research.

Student led presentations of current topics related to molecular medicine.

Supervised doctoral research in molecular diagnostics or biomedical studies.