The Institute of Environmental Health Sciences administers a Ph.D. graduate program in Molecular and Cellular Toxicology that is integrated with the Interdisciplinary Biomedical Sciences (IBS) program at the Wayne State University School of Medicine. The Interdisciplinary Program in Molecular and Cellular Toxicology offers a wide range of research opportunities and emphasizes investigations that probe the molecular and cellular mechanisms that underwrite environmental and metabolic disease processes. Many of the available research projects examine the effects of environmental agents on transcriptional and translational regulation of gene expression, intracellular signaling, apoptosis, oxidative stress, DNA repair, and complex mechanisms in cell growth and differentiation.

The Institute of Environmental Health Sciences is enriched by its support from a nationally recognized Center in Molecular and Cellular Toxicology with Human Applications, which is funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Faculty members from the Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Wayne State University School of Medicine, the College of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Allied Health Professions, and the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute participate in the Interdisciplinary Program in Molecular and Cellular Toxicology.

The graduate program emphasizes the use of contemporary approaches, such as advanced techniques in biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, molecular genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics and similar strategies to advance the understanding of fundamental biological processes as they relate to environmentally induced disease. Program requirements include didactic course work, consisting of both required and elective courses; laboratory rotations; seminar programs; and written and oral qualifying examinations. In addition, the student completing this program is required to prepare a dissertation describing the results of original research and to present an oral defense of the dissertation. The first year is course work–intensive, with research rotations performed in the laboratories of two or more faculty members of the student’s choice. Following the selection of a thesis adviser and thesis committee (usually at the beginning of the second year), students continue course work and perform preliminary research. Qualifying examinations for admission to Ph.D. candidacy are administered in the spring of the second year. Subsequent years are primarily research-intensive in nature.

In order to prepare for emerging challenges in academics and industry, students in the program have access to research laboratories that perform innovative cell culture and molecular biology techniques such as transient and stable transfections, real-time polymerase chain reaction amplification, cellular imaging, protein-protein interaction analyses, and transgenic and knockout animal engineering. Students also have opportunities to learn how to prepare and apply recombinant plasmid-based and adenoviral constructs expressing dominant negative proteins and antisense and short interfering RNAs as molecular tools and gain valuable experience in microarray and proteomic global gene-expression studies.

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