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Detailed Information

Program of Study

The Department of Biological Sciences hosts a broad-based Graduate Program in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) leading to the Ph.D. degree. The program’s goal is to train independent scientists in research and teaching. Students are immersed in all aspects of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology, including genetics, biochemistry, and microbiology, and then specialize in the field of study chosen for dissertation research. Faculty members have a wide range of research interests, providing students with many choices in the area in which to specialize; these interests include cell physiology, chromatin and transcription, computational modeling, DNA recognition, gene expression, host-microbe interactions, molecular genomics, pattern formation and cell fate, protein biogenesis, RNA splicing, signal transduction, and tumorigenesis.

During the first year, students explore the scientific opportunities available in the Department by attending seminars, including the Departmental retreat, and by pursuing research rotations in three different laboratories. Students also participate in an intensive core course taught by research-active faculty members in their area of expertise; all the important research problems in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology are covered, with an emphasis on critical thinking and breadth. By the end of April of the first year, students choose the laboratory in which they will conduct their dissertation research, and this becomes their major pursuit. In the second and third years, students take advanced graduate courses in areas related to their research; courses are run by the Department, but students may also attend advanced graduate classes hosted by other departments.

The student’s training is also fostered by attending a variety of informal and formal research meetings and seminars given by local and visiting scientists, which are held in the Department and in several other local departments. Each student also presents their own research to the Department once each year as part of a weekly seminar series. Students and faculty members interact with neighboring scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Pittsburgh Genetics Institute, Graduate School of Public Health, Duquesne University, and Carnegie Mellon University, providing additional breadth to the program.

The student’s progress is followed by a faculty adviser in the first year and by the thesis adviser and committee thereafter. Near the end of the second year, Ph.D. students are required to pass a comprehensive examination that emphasizes the development of an original research proposal.

Training students as teachers as well as researchers is an integral part of the program. Students teach at least one semester as teaching assistants in an undergraduate course and have opportunities to teach on a more individual basis by supervising undergraduates on research projects. Those students with more interest in teaching can also participate in a unique Teaching Minor program hosted by the Department.

Research Facilities

State-of-the-art research facilities are housed in the Clapp-Langley-Crawford (CLC) complex and the newly constructed Life Sciences Annex. The Department is superbly equipped with a wide variety of instrumentation and numerous common facilities, including darkrooms, cold rooms, virus and tissue culture facilities, controlled-environment rooms, ultracentrifuges, high-pressure liquid chromatography, electron microscopes, a phosphorimager, X-ray diffractometers, an X-ray area detector, computer graphics, confocal and fluorescence microscopes, experimental data collection/processing minicomputers, microcomputer facilities, a transgenic mouse facility, PCR machines, and a facility for high-throughput DNA sequencing and gene microarray analysis. Access is also available to the Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center, managed by Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the Westinghouse Electric Corporation.

Financial Aid

Stipends for 2009–10 are $24,600.

Cost of Study

Tuition is waived for admitted students.

Living and Housing Costs

Off-campus housing is available near the campus and in surrounding communities. Rents vary depending on the type of accommodations selected. Housing is quite affordable, and some graduate students even purchase houses in pleasant residential neighborhoods. Many opportunities to share expenses are also available. Additional information may be obtained from the University Housing Office (412-624-7116).

Student Group

A number of men and women are recruited each year, and their average age is 23. Most students have done undergraduate work in biology, chemistry, physics, or biochemistry at an institution in the United States, but students are also recruited from abroad. A research and/or teaching career in industry, academic institutions, nonprofits, or civil service is the long-term goal of most students.

Location

Pittsburgh, with a population of 369,879, is part of a greater metropolitan area of 1.3 million people. The University occupies more than 120 acres of Oakland, the cultural hub of the city. Pittsburgh is of sufficient size to support a wide variety of cultural and athletics events, including performances of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, the Pittsburgh Opera, the O’Reilly Theater, the Three Rivers Arts Festival, and the International Poetry Forum, as well as home games of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Steelers, and Penguins. The city also has an extensive system of large parks. Schenley Park, adjacent to the University and to Carnegie Mellon, is the site of the renowned Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, and Highland Park contains the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium. North of the downtown area are the Allegheny Observatory, the Carnegie Science Center, Andy Warhol Museum, and the National Aviary. Close to the campus are the Carnegie Museums of Natural History and Art and the Carnegie Library. Boating, camping, fishing, golf, hiking, ice-skating, and skiing are available in the area.

The University

The University of Pittsburgh, founded eleven years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, is a nonsectarian, coeducational institution. As part of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education, it receives financial support from the state. Currently, in research, the University of Pittsburgh ranks seventh among all U.S. universities in the number of competitive grants awarded to members of its faculty by the National Institutes of Health. The University has 17,208 undergraduate and 9,812 graduate students and 4,485 faculty members. The library system maintains excellent collections totaling more than 5.6 million volumes. Petersen Events Center, the University of Pittsburgh’s athletic facility, is the venue for basketball games and concerts; it also houses exercise facilities and an Olympic-size swimming pool, which are open to all students. Intercollegiate athletics events with nationally ranked teams are frequent, and student tickets are available to many of these events.

Applying

Candidates should have an undergraduate degree in biology, chemistry, physics, or mathematics. Candidates must apply online and arrange for academic transcripts, at least three letters of recommendation, and GRE scores to be forwarded to the Department. Applications from students in the U.S. and Canada should be submitted by January 15 (December 15 for international students).

The Faculty and Their Research

• Karen M. Arndt, Professor; Ph.D., Berkeley, 1988. Mechanisms of transcriptional regulation in yeast.
• Jon P. Boyle, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Wisconsin, 2003. Virulence and host range in intracellular pathogens.
• Jeffrey L. Brodsky, Professor; Ph.D., Harvard, 1990. Mechanism and action of molecular chaperones.
• Gerard L. Campbell, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Leicester (England), 1987. Molecular genetics of development in Drosophila.
• Deborah L. Chapman, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Columbia, 1993. Mouse developmental biology.
• Robert L. Duda, Research Assistant Professor; Ph.D., UCLA, 1983. Structure and assembly of bacteriophages.
• Michael D. Grabe, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Berkeley, 2002. Computational modeling of molecular and cellular systems.
• Paula J. Grabowski, Professor; Ph.D., Colorado, 1983. Alternative RNA splicing in the nervous system.
• Graham F. Hatfull, Professor and Chair; Ph.D., Edinburgh, 1981. Molecular genetics of mycobacteria; site-specific recombination.
• John Hempel, Research Associate Professor; Ph.D., Rutgers, 1981. Structure-function relationships of proteins.
• Roger W. Hendrix, Professor; Ph.D., Harvard, 1970. Mechanisms of assembly and principles of structure in bacterial viruses.
• Jeffrey D. Hildebrand, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Virginia, 1995. Cell biology; genetics of mouse development.
• Lewis A. Jacobson, Professor; Ph.D., Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1967. Signal transduction in C. elegans muscle.
• Linda Jen-Jacobson, Professor; Ph.D., Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1967. Molecular mechanisms of sequence-specificity in protein-DNA interactions; structure-function relationships, energetics, and conformational dynamics in proteins and nucleic acids.
• Kirill I. Kiselyov, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Institute of Cytology (Russia). TRP ion channels; human genetic diseases caused by mutations in TRP channels.
• Jeffrey G. Lawrence, Professor; Ph.D., Washington (St. Louis), 1991. Molecular evolution of bacterial genomes.
• Joseph A. Martens, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Western Ontario, 1990. The regulation of gene expression in yeast.
• Craig L. Peebles, Professor; Ph.D., Chicago, 1978. Mechanism of RNA splicing.
• James M. Pipas, Professor; Ph.D., Florida State, 1975. Molecular biology of DNA tumor viruses; molecular mechanisms of tumorigenicity.
• Beth L. Roman, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Wisconsin–Madison, 1997. Vascular development in zebrafish.
• John M. Rosenberg, Professor; Ph.D., MIT, 1973. Structural basis of sequence-specific DNA-protein interactions.
• M. Teresa Sáenz-Robles, Research Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Madrid (Spain), 1986. Molecular mechanisms of cell growth and proliferation.
• William S. Saunders, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Johns Hopkins, 1990. Segregation of chromosomes during mitosis.
• Anthony Schwacha, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Harvard, 1996. Mechanism and regulation of DNA replication.
• Beth Stronach, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Utah, 1997. Signal transduction and morphogenesis.
• Andrew P. VanDemark, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., Johns Hopkins, 2001. Structural biology of chromatin.
• Richard D. Wood, Adjunct Professor; Ph.D., Berkeley, 1981. Cellular responses to DNA damage in human cells.
• Recent Representative Faculty Publications
• Shirra, M. K., et al. K. M. Arndt. A chemical genomics study identifies Snf1 as a repressor of GCN4 translation. J. Biol. Chem. 283(51):35889–98, 2008.
• Boyle, J. P., et al. Expression quantitative trait locus mapping of Toxoplasma genes reveals multiple mechanisms for strain-specific differences in gene expression. Eukaryot. Cell 7(8):1403–14, 2008.
• Park, H. J., et al. (J. L. Brodsky). A soluble sulfogalactosyl ceramide mimic promotes Delta F508 CFTR escape from endoplasmic reticulum associated degradation. Chem. Biol. 16(4):461–70, 2009.
• Wehn, A., and G. L. Campbell. Genetic interactions between scribbler, Atrophin and groucho uncover links in transcriptional repression. Genetics 173:849–62, 2006.
• Oginuma, M., Y. Niwa, D. L. Chapman, and Y. Saga. Mesp2 and Tbx6 cooperatively create periodic patterns coupled with the clock machinery during mouse somitogenesis. Development 135(15):2555–62, 2008.
• Dierkes, L. E., et al. (R. L. Duda). Mutational analysis of a conserved glutamic acid required for self-catalyzed cross-linking of bacteriophage HK97 capsids. J. Virol. 83(5):2088–98, 2009.
• Choe, S., K. A. Hecht, and M. D. Grabe. A continuum method for determining membrane protein insertion energies and the problem of charged residues. J. Gen. Physiol. 131:563–73, 2008.
• Grabowski, P. J. RNA-binding proteins switch gears to drive alternative splicing in neurons. Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol. 14(7):577–9, 2007.
• Comeau, A. M., et al. G. F. Hatfull. Exploring the prokaryotic virosphere. Res. Microbiol. 159(5):306–13, 2008.
• Hempel, J., A. Kraut, and T. Wymore. Gamma glutamyl semialdehyde dehydrogenase: simulations on native and mutant forms support the importance of outer shell lysines. Chem. Biol. Interact. 178(1–3):75–8, 2009.
• Nemecek, D., S. A. Overman, R. W. Hendrix, and G. J. Thomas Jr. Unfolding thermodynamics of the Delta-domain in the prohead I subunit of phage HK97: determination by factor analysis of Raman spectra. J. Mol. Biol. 385(2):628–41, 2009.
• Yoder, M., andJ. D. Hildebrand. Shroom4 (KIAA1202) is an actin-associated protein implicated in cytoskeletal organization. Cell Motil. Cytoskeleton 64(1):49–63, 2007.
• Jen-Jacobson, L., and L. A. Jacobson. The role of water and the effects of small ions in site-specific protein-DNA interactions. In Structural Biology of Protein-Nucleic Acid Interactions, ed. Rice, P.A., and C. Correll. Royal Society of Chemistry Publishing, Cambridge, UK, 2008.
• VanderVeen, L. A., T. M. Harris, L. Jen-Jacobson, and L. J. Marnett. Formation of DNA-protein cross-links between gamma-hydroxypropanodeoxyguanosine and EcoRI. Chem. Res. Toxicol. 21(9):1733–8, 2008.
• Kiselyov, K. I. and S. Muallem. Mitochondrial Ca2+ homeostasis in lysosomal storage diseases. Cell Calcium 44(1):103–11, 2008.
• Lawrence, J. G., and A. C. Retchless. The interplay of homologous recombination and horizontal gene transfer in bacterial speciation. Methods Mol. Biol. 532:29–53, 2009.
• Martens, J. A., P. Y. Wu, and F. Winston. Regulation of an intergenic transcript controls adjacent gene transcription in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.Genes Dev. 19(22):2695–704, 2005.
• Dierkes, L. E., C. L. Peebles et al. Mutational analysis of a conserved glutamic acid required for self-catalyzed cross-linking of bacteriophage HK97 capsids. J. Virol. 83(5):2088–98, 2009.
• Pipas, J. M. SV40: Cell transformation and tumorigenesis. Virology384(2):294–303, 2009.
• Anderson, M.J., et al. (Roman, B. L.) Loss of unc45a precipitates arteriovenous shunting in the aortic arches. Dev. Biol. 318(2):258–67, 2008.
• Sapienza, P.J., J. M. Rosenberg, and L. Jen-Jacobson. Structural and thermodynamic basis for enhanced DNA binding by a promiscuous mutant EcoRI endonuclease. Structure 15(11): 1368–82, 2007.
• Sáenz-Robles, M. T., et al. Intestinal hyperplasia induced by simian virus 40 large tumor antigen requires E2F2. J. Virol. 81(23):13191–9, 2007.
• Acilan, C., and W. S. Saunders. A tale of too many centrosomes. Cell 134(4):572–5, 2008.
• Bochman, M. L., and A. Schwacha. The Mcm2-7 complex has in vitro helicase activity. Mol. Cell 31(2):287–93, 2008.
• Baril, C., et al. B. Stronach. The PP2C alphabet is a negative regulator of SAPK signaling in Drosophila.Genetics 181(2):567–79, 2009.
• VanDemark, A. P., et al. Structural and functional analysis of the Spt16p N-terminal domain reveals overlapping roles of yFACT subunits. J. Biol. Chem. 283(8):5058–68, 2008.
• Arana, M. E., et al. (R. D. Wood). A unique error signature for human DNA polymerase nu. DNA Repair 6(2):213–23, 2007.

Correspondence and Information

University of Pittsburgh
Cathy Barr
Recruitment and Admissions Committee
Department of Biological Sciences
A-234 Langley Hall
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260
Telephone: 412-624-4268
Fax: 412-624-4759
Email: biophd@pitt.edu