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Molecular and Cellular Biology

Houston, Texas

Image 1: Ovulated mouse cumulus cell oocyte complex immunostained for matrix proteins hyaluronan and versican. By JoAnne Richards, Ph.D.; Image 2: By Yi LI, Ph.D.; Image 3: Mouse oocyte at meiosis I immunostained for tubulin (red) phosphop38MAPK (green) and DNA (blue). By JoAnne Richards, Ph.D.; Image 4: Expanded cumulus cell ooctye ocmplex immunostained for hyaluronan (red), TSG6 (green) and DAN (blue). By JoAnne Richards, Ph.D.; Image 5: Epithelial cells taken from a mouse mammary gland were cultured in a dish and transduced with a retrovirus expressing two genes. The green staining shows green fluorescent protein and the red staining shows progesterone receptor expression. The nucleus of each cell is stained blue. Photomicrograph taken at 200X magnification. By Sandra L. Grimm, Ph.D.; Image 6: Ovarian vasculature (red) is excluded from the granulosa cells (blue) within growing follicles (round structures); Image 7: Ovulated mouse cumulus cell oocyte complex immunostained for matrix proteins hyaluronan and versican. By JoAnne Richards, Ph.D.
Molecular and Cellular Biology
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Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology

The Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology is recognized internationally for research in regulation of gene expression, hormone action, cancer biology, molecular genetics, and gene therapy.

Specific areas of our research focus on reproductive biology, developmental biology, neurobiology, and general translational cancer biology. Our approach is to utilize molecular biological analyses in relation to the intact cell and to organ physiology.

Apply to the Graduate Program in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Highlights

  • With the efforts of 70 graduate students, over 100 postdoctoral fellows, and a large amount of investigator funding, MCB serves as a national model for collaborative research interactions, graduate and postdoctoral training and education.
  • Annual budget exceeds $30 million in research funding from external sources and ranks number one among U.S. medical school basic science departments (without a clinical component) in NIH funding.

  • The MCB Department is a participant in two Specialized Programs of Research Excellence, one for prostate cancer and one for breast cancer, as well as a Specialized Cooperative Center Program in Reproductive Research and a multi-institutional program to compile an Atlas of Orphan Nuclear Receptors, jointly supported by four NIH Institutes.

  • Members of the faculty hold appointments in the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center, the Huffington Center on Aging and the Center for Comparative Medicine.

  • Molecular and Cellular Biology faculty also participate in the Learning and Memory Research Center in association with the Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, and the NCI designated Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center.

General Areas of Research

Research interests of the large, multidisciplinary faculty focus on the molecular basis of gene regulation and the regulation of normal and abnormal cellular differentiation and growth in many animal and transgenic mouse models.

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