ICMB Associated Research Units

There are several organized research units affiliated with the ICMB. These units provide faculty and students with intellectual communities and infrastructure focused on several exciting areas of biological research.

CSSB

The Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology at UT represents an amalgam of researchers who are attempting to not only quantitatively understand and engineer the interaction and regulatory networks underlying organismal metabolism, but also to foster a new way to carry out interdisciplinary research.

Undergraduates participate heavily in the research endeavors in the various labs involved in the CSSB, and graduate students frequently interact with several advisors on large, collaborative projects during their careers, in order to garner a range of skills and insights. Senior researchers, such as postdoctoral fellows, lead research teams that can take responsibility for large tasks, such as characterizing deletion libraries or developing reagents that can fully probe interaction networks.

The research endeavors being carried out under the auspices of the CSSB are the antithesis of the top-down, single lab, flat organizational models that traditionally dominate discipline-driven research. Many researchers are interested in developing custom microarrays using a set of cDNA clones, genomic samples, or oligonucleotides. Our primary aim is to provide cost-effective and time-efficient access to microarray technology, as well as an environment that facilitates effective analysis and sharing of microarray data.

The Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology (CSSB) oversees the UT Microarray Core Facility, and is dedicated to providing microarray services to UT and to off-campus users. For additional information please visit the Center webpage http://cssb.icmb.utexas.edu/index.php

WCAAR

The M. June and J. Virgil Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research was established in 1998. Dr. Adron Harris directs the Center which focuses on the molecular basis of alcoholism and addiction. Dr. Harris and several other faculty have laboratories in the Molecular Biology building and twenty-nine faculty from several other disciplines, including Neurobiology, Pharmacology, and Psychology, participate in the Center. A major goal of the Center is the identification of genes responsible for alcoholism and drug addiction. The faculty use a range of techniques, including transcriptome analysis, mutation of brain proteins and construction of mutant mice, to define sites of drug action and molecular mechanisms of addiction.
Fellowships for support of graduate students working in the area of addiction are available from funds administered by the Center. These fellowships are supported by income from endowments from the Fred Murphy Jones and Homer Lindsey Bruce Estates. For additional information, visit the Center’s webpage: http://wcaar.icmb.utexas.edu/.

TI-3D

The Texas Institute for Drug and Diagnostic Development (TI-3D) is a recently launched organization that provides infrastructure and coordination of translational medical therapeutic and diagnostic research efforts between UT, Texas medical schools, and commercial entities. The specific mission of TI-3D is to carry out the early and translation stage development of drugs and new diagnostic approaches within an academic setting, while providing a facile interface with industry to promote commercialization. The TI-3D will combine and capitalize on the world-class expertise at the state’s flagship teaching and medical institutions, namely: (i) excellence in clinical science and the molecular mechanisms of disease at Texas medical schools; and (ii) the internationally recognized programs in organic, medicinal, and analytical chemistry as well as pharmacy, engineering, biochemistry, and cell and molecular biology at UT. Simultaneously, the TI-3D will provide a focal point that will promote an unparalleled level of interaction with commercial entities at all appropriate stages of therapeutics and diagnostics development.

The TI-3D vision is to be an institute with three critical and interdependent new elements; a new organization to foster multi-investigator research, new facilities to provide state-of-the-art research infrastructure, and a new educational purpose based upon training students to understand the broader, multi-disciplinary nature of drug and diagnostic research. The TI-3D will allow ICMB researchers and their students to carry out the early steps in drug and diagnostics development and thus facilitate the translation of the benefits to society of basic medical research in Texas.

The TI-3D will be run with a board of directors style of management to provide a culture of inclusion and accountability. We expect that TI-3D will become a national model for close cooperation between research universities, medical schools, and commercial entities. TI-3D will provide a mechanism for addressing pressing medical needs in a pragmatic fashion that combines all of the important basic and clinical research organizations within the state. For additional information, visit the Center’s webpage: http://www.ti3d.utexas.edu/.

CCBB

The Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics is dedicated to fostering research and graduate training at the interface of biology, mathematics, and computer science. The Center supports collaborative research and training grants. It provides computational facilities and training workshops on various topics surrounding computational analysis of biological data. Faculty from nine departments and four colleges participate regularly in CCBB activities, and the Center draws many of its participants from the Institute of Cellular and Molecular Biology. Much of the Center’s research and training activities concern analysis of biomolecular data, with particular current emphases on structural prediction, molecular evolutionary models and theory, phylogenetic analysis, analysis of microarrays, molecular visualization, and epidemiological modeling. For additional information, visit the Center’s webpage: http://ccbb.biosci.utexas.edu/.