P30-Core Grant for Vision Research

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Overall Summary Continued support is requested for the NEI Core Grant for Vision Research that supports investigators of the Atlanta Vision Research Community (AVRC). This Center Grant renewal application includes three Resource/Service Cores: (1) Structural Biology and Imaging, (2) Functional Genomics and Proteomics, and (3) Bioinformatics and Biostatistics. The AVRC Core grant supports collaborative vision research and service among 23 faculty with 18 eligible NEI funded R01s, 24 postdoctoral fellows, and 38 predoctoral fellows. This support comes largely via the expertise and service of AVRC personnel, their training of AVRC faculty and staff, and the availability of equipment, supplies, and other resources. In the past 5 years, the Core grant contributed to the generation of 193 peer-reviewed publications and to many new and competing renewal NEI-funded R01s. During the next 5 years, we are actively recruiting 5-7 junior research tenure-track faculty who will re- invigorate the AVRC and the EEC, increasing the need, value, and scientific impact of this P30 Core grant. The Structural Biology and Imaging (SBI) Core provides resources and services for members of the AVRC with regard to determining the relationship between normal and abnormal structure of ocular structures in healthy tissue and in disease models with and without experimental therapies. Support is provided for structure- function studies with an emphasis on retinal function, retinal degeneration/injury, RPE morphometry, ocular oncology and gene/drug delivery. The Core supports ultrasonography, immunohistochemistry, confocal microscopy, fluorescence image analysis, and light and electron microscopy services. The goal of the Functional Genomics and Proteomics (FG&P) Core is to enhance research that increases our understanding of how biological function (e.g., vision) arises from the information encoded in an organism's genome and is modified by epigenetics. The Core supports molecular, biochemical, and phenotypic experiments via six sections: DNA/RNA services, protein/small molecule analysis, cell culture, and ocular/vision structural and functional analysis, rodent ocular microsurgery, and mouse colony services. Approaches include scanning laser ophthalmoscopy, SD-OCT, fundus imaging, precision micrometry, photorefraction, rebound tonometry, ERG, OKT, HPLC, LC-MS, PCR, LCM, immunoblotting and ELISA, flow- cytometry, protein sequencing, microarray analysis, and NexGen sequencing. The Bioinformatics and Biostatistics (Bioanalysis) Core provides biostatistics, bioinformatics, data management, electronic notebooks, data backups, and advanced computational analyses. The support includes effort of Core-dedicated informaticists and statisticians, advanced software, and cloud-computing access. An Advisory Committee aids the Core directors to insure full and equitable use of the facilities and to advise on creation of new resources based on need or elimination of components that are underutilized. The Cores have increased and will continue to increase research productivity by providing common services to stimulate and facilitate collaborative studies among faculty and to attract other academic disciplines to vision research.