CORE--CELL AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY FACILITY

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In anticipation of the revolutionary impact that the techniques of molecular biology would have on diabetes research, the Michigan Diabetes Research and Training Center (MDRTC) proposed a Molecular Biology Core (MBC) to introduce these techniques to its investigators as part of its 1986 Competing Renewal Application. Because the relevant research base was just being established, a joint core with the Center for Reproductive and Developmental Biology was proposed. Weakness of the research base, and administrative concerns about joint supervision led to disapproval of the core, with a strong admonition for a subsequent reformulated supplemental application. Such an application was submitted and approved for funding by the NIDDKD Council in early 1988, but the institution of a funding "cap" for the Diabetes Center led to administrative withdrawal of the proposal. A scaled-down version of the Core was subsequently equipped and initiated with institutional funds, facilitating the entry of several Center investigators into the molecular realm. Dramatic infusion of molecular techniques into the Diabetes Center research base over the last five years, plus the recent recruitment of Jack Dixon, PhD, an outstanding diabetes-related molecular biologist experienced in directing a Diabetes Center Molecular Biology Core, full justify the initiation of a full-scale Molecular Biology Core to enhance diabetes and endocrine- related molecular research at the Center by providing cost-effective methods for enhancing research activities among investigators, by introducing and exploiting modern molecular techniques, by fostering collaboration and providing state-of-the-art methods and training to investigators in the area of molecular biology, by providing the foundation for analysis of molecular structures and function as well as generating the tools necessary to study gene regulation, and by providing disease markers to further the understanding and treatment of diabetes, its complications and related endocrine and metabolic disorders.