Career Enhancement Core (Arnold)
The Career Enhancement Core proposes an integrated set of educational and research support activities to foster development of research at UCLA in women’s health and sex as a biological variable (SABV) in disease, especially related to sex differences in the metabolic syndrome. We aim to spread the word about when and how SABV has an important effect on physiology and disease, and to teach best practices for investigating sex-biasing factors (i.e., gonadal hormones and sex chromosomes) that affect disease. We intend to seed and incubate fledgling research projects, and build an interactive community of investigators at UCLA and nationally that considers women’s health and sex differences in their research. Key activities include:
- an advanced undergraduate/graduate course on Sex Differences in Physiology and Disease
- workshops on clinical and experimental approaches to study SABV
- ongoing one-on-one consultations with UCLA investigators concerning how to make their research relevant to women’s health and SABV
- lectures by invited speakers who study women’s health and SABV issues
- coordination with UCLA undergraduate programs to involve underrepresented minority students in exciting research on women’s health and SABV
- a Pilot & Feasibility Grant program to enhance ability of investigators to perform SABV-relevant research
Genomic Technologies Core (Pellegrini)
This core provides next-generation sequencing and bioinformatic analysis of transcriptomic (RNA-seq), ATAC-seq, and ChIP-seq data to enhance understanding of molecular mechanisms underlying sex differences in MetSyn. Key activities include:
- RNA-seq data analysis
- Generation of ATAC-seq and ChIP-seq libraries, and downstream analysis and peak calling
- Visualization of genomic datasets in genome browser at single base resolution
- Quality control metric analysis or genomic datasets