Academic Plan:   Cell Biology Group An integrated cell, molecular and developmental biology unit

  "To understand biology one must first understand how cells function"

      By uniting the cell biologists on campus to form a cohesive unit, we will be ideally positioned as a functional genomics group able to apply the data generated by the genome projects to the understanding of how cells function and organisms develop.

Goal:       Our goal is to establish an integrated, interdepartmental Cell and Developmental Biology research group.  Members would be from the Faculties of Science and Medicine and would interact with researchers across campus and off campus including labs focussing on biophysics, bioinformatics, and biodiversity.  Associations with departments like Engineering, Computer Science, and Commerce will be encouraged in order to develop industrial applications wherever possible.  The organization of the cell biology unit will be done in consultation and collaboration with existing departments so that everyone will benefit.  No one would be required to leave their home departments but we would encourage active participation in the various seminars, workshops and courses that the cell biology unit sponsors.

      We plan to create three focus areas of research to build collaborative interactions within the cell biology unit, as well as to bridge to other disciplines.  We strongly believe that by building on our existing strengths, we can build a group that can achieve worldwide recognition and would be highly competitive for outside funding.  We plan to create a strong graduate program based on a learning centred environment to attract and train outstanding graduate students and post-doctoral fellows.  We will create a series of core undergraduate courses in Cell Biology to serve undergraduate students in the Life Sciences discipline, or who are simply interested in learning about biology, biotechnology, and its applications. 

  Vision: 

      The 19th century was the century of Physics, and the 20th, the century of Chemistry.  The unanimous prediction is that the 21st century will be the century of Cell, Molecular and Developmental Biology.  Advances in cell biology, along with its applications, biotechnology, genetic engineering and genomics, will revolutionize medicine, agriculture, and industry, and in so doing alter society.  Cell and molecular biology is the foundation of both a new economic base and a social evolution for the 21st century. 

      Cell and molecular biology and its applications hold the future.  UBC, the province, and Canada must be ready to participate.  Cell and molecular biology will provide the foundation for the chemical and physical understanding of all cellular functions.  Understanding the molecular and genetic mechanisms that underlie cellular behaviors and responses to neighboring cells and the environment will make it possible to understand tissue and organ function.  Ultimately, we will understand all plant and animal physiology, and finally, be able to understand the process that subsumes all others, development.  The application of this basic knowledge to human, animal and plant health will have profound impacts on medicine and agriculture.

  Current situation: 

      At present the cell and developmental biologists are scattered across campus in the Departments of Botany, Microbiology & Immunology and Zoology in the Faculty of Science and in the Departments of Anatomy, Pathology, Biochemistry, Medical Genetics, Physiology, and Neuroscience in the Faculty of Medicine.  In addition, cell and developmental biologists are in the Faculty of Dentistry, in the Faculty of Agriculture, in the Biotechnology Laboratory and in the Biomedical Research Centre.  This results in a series of small islands of researchers that lack research cohesion and who cannot pool resources.  Most importantly, the various groups lack the critical mass and visibility required to put UBC on the map, nationally or internationally.  Each small group of cell biologists works in isolation, surrounded by colleagues who do not understand the need for shared (and often expensive) resources.

  A Possible Solution: 

      To form an integrated cell biology unit that will be able to work together to share expertise, common resources and goals.  Ideally the cell biology unit would share contiguous space to generate a dynamic and stimulating research environment and would maximize the usage of shared resources.  An integrated cell biology unit will allow us to establish a strong program for graduate and undergraduate education.  Our program will be able to take advantage of the expertise of researchers from many different fields with the combined interest in cell and developmental biology.  This would reduce overlap and duplication in the teaching program, allow more efficient use of resources and allow the development of novel, integrated courses.  An integrated cell biology unit can concentrate on our strengths in cell and developmental biology with respect to future hirings and research directions.  This will create a strong, young group that will be an attraction for new faculty to the university to further strengthen our research program and contribute to our teaching program.  An integrated cell biology unit will also allow for more successful group grant applications in order to strengthen and expand our funding base.  Rather than small groups competing between departments, we would now be able to work as a group to apply for CIHR, NSERC and CFI funds for shared equipment and resources.  Finally an integrated cell biology unit would create a more flexible research environment where research programs, directions and hirings are not limited by traditional departmental boundaries but rather reflect the groups' research strengths and future scientific directions. 

  Milestones:

Year 1: 

·        Initiate a virtual Cell & Developmental Biology Unit.

·        Establish the areas that will be targets for heavy research emphasis and future hirings.

·        Establish hiring priorities (areas and numbers) in collaboration with other departments and to be integrated with Biotechnology Lab, BRC, CORD and Neuroscience hiring and 21^st century chair initiatives.

·        Establish the curriculum for the Cell & Developmental Biology Graduate Program.

·        Integrate with the Functional Genomics/Proteomics Initiative (Genome Canada).

·        Work in consultation with other departments, the Faculty of Science and senior administration to establish a "space plan" to house the Cell & Developmental Biology Research Labs

·        Establish joint facilities needs and apply to CFI for core facilities/infrastructure grant. 

·        Request matching funds from the University in order to apply for CFI funding.

  Years 2-3:

·        Launch the Cell & Developmental Biology Graduate Training Program.

·        As space becomes available relocate some faculty from other 'departments' to be physically located in Cell & Developmental Biology.

·        Establish core undergraduate courses and integrate within other Life Sciences including the Biology program.  This includes establishing new courses, and putting them through the various curriculum committees.

·        Establish joint initiatives with other departmental units whenever possible.

·        Participate in the Functional Genomics/Proteomics Initiative, includes group grants, shared facilities, and research targets. 

·        Hire new faculty into areas targeted for heavy emphasis.

·        Seek private funding to complement federal and provincial grant funding.

·        Physical research group comes into being by the end of year 3.

  Years 3-5:

·        Unit is fully integrated, research labs are physically contiguous, and function as an intact entity.

·        New hirings to replace retirees and to add to areas targeted for emphasis.

·        Undergraduate courses completely established and working to serve a variety of undergraduate programs including, but not limited to, the life science streams.

·        Next 5 year hiring plan established.

·        Next round of joint funding applied for.

·        Establish second round of joint programs for example with biotechnology/commerce.

 Physical Space: 

      Many of our members are currently isolated in buildings or departments where it is very difficult to foster an active, dynamic research environment.  Bringing all members into a contiguous group would create an environment where the labs work evenings and weekends, where people actively engage in scientific conversation in the halls, where the latest/hottest paper in a scientific journal is passionately discussed with other members of the group and, most importantly, where the graduate students can go to neighboring labs for advice, reagents and support. 

      An option is the Biological Sciences Building which is one logical place to consolidate the Cell Biologists into one contiguous group as many of us are already present in this building.  One of our goals is to maintain close ties with researchers in both the Biotechnology Group and in CORD, which will be easy to do from the Biosciences building.  It will also allow interactions with other Biologists in Botany, Zoology, Microbiology & Immunology and Medical Genetics.  This close association will help foster an exciting, interactive environment that will ensure that our graduate students have exposure to a broad range of research interests and applications.  We envision space becoming available through a number of potential avenues as the Biotechnology Laboratories move to their new building and as researchers retire.

 Researchers' Support: 

The following represents a list of those researchers who have expressed an interest in joining an interactive, interdepartmental research group of Cell and Developmental Biology and those who want to be considered "associates".  

Hiring Plan: 

Faculty:

Our philosophy is to concentrate on our strengths in cell and developmental biology.  These are the areas where the immediate applications of genomics will be first applied, and be most useful.   In addition, these areas complement existing strengths on campus in biochemistry, neurobiology, biotechnology, genomics, and medical genetics, without duplicating other strong groupings on campus.  By concentrating on our strengths, we can build groups that can compete with research institutes, attract excellent students, post-doctoral fellows, and faculty.  We would rather be known for doing a few things really well than have our efforts scattered by trying to do too many things.  We envisage three main subgroups, although many labs will have ties with more than one group:

1. developmental biology 

2. cell signaling

3. gene regulation

      We chose these three groupings because they recognize our current strengths, while identifying areas of study that we believe will continue to grow in importance for several decades to come.  Developmental biology underlies all biology.  Single celled organisms must organize their internal structures, regulate their genes and adapt to their environment.  Multicellular organisms do the same things by integrating the behavior of different cells in time and space to achieve functioning tissues and organs.  Genomics is going to have a very large impact on developmental biology. 

      Once genomes are catalogued into organized units the function of individual and coordinated groups of genes and their products must be defined.  To define the function of these identified genes the effects of mutations in these genes can be described at the molecular, cellular and organismal level.  An enormous effort will be required to generate and integrate this information, and to understand how this information is read out to give developmental changes.  Auld, Haughn, Moerman, O’Connor, Roskams, Tetzlaff, Brock, Kunst, Grigliatti, Crawford, Teh and Vogl could be classified as developmental biologists.  Most of the group uses model organisms, which are the current focus of complete genome mapping and sequencing, suggesting that model organisms should continue to be a focus of our group.  Developmental neurobiology is another obvious future direction for the group, as four members of the future group (Auld, O’Connor, Roskams, and Tetzlaff) work in this area, and it would connect and strengthen work already being done in CORD which focuses on neural regeneration and with C. elegans researchers that are interested in neural  development.

      Vancouver is very lucky to have a strong group of signal transduction researchers.  All cells must receive and process signals from outside of the cell and transduce them so that changes in cell status, and gene expression occur.  While we are beginning to glimpse how transduction pathways work, at present we have less understanding of how cells integrate information among different pathways, or how different cells respond differently to the same stimuli.  Panté is a world leader in the application of electron microscopic imaging to the study of the transport of macromolecules in vivo, particularly nuclear transport and compartment targeting.  Gold, Johnson, Matsuuchi, Schrader, Teh, Roskelley and Roberge work on signal transduction.  It is notable that most members of this group are immunologists.  This strength should continue to be built on in the future. 

      Gene regulation underlies all cell behavior, and thus all development.  While transcriptional regulation is beginning to be understood, the questions surrounding the coordinated activation and silencing of related genes are becoming more important and intriguing.  We know that alterations in chromatin can control the regulation of functionally related gene groups but we know very little about the role of chromatin in gene regulation. Douglas, Haughn and Brock have primary interests in gene regulation.  Brock, Brown and Grigliatti all work on chromatin-mediated gene regulation, which might become a core area for future hirings.

      It is crucial that the Cell and Developmental Biology group strengthen its current ties with Biotechnology Laboratory, BRC, CORD and the Canadian Genomics Initiative through joint appointments.  These close associations would enable the Cell Biology group to become an integral part of the functional investigation of the data generated by the genome projects.  We envision that the opportunities to hire new members of the group will arise from a combination of both retirements from participating departments along with the 21^st century chair initiative.  A number of joint appointments have been proposed for 21^st century chairs that will directly fit into the cell and developmental biology group.  Some of these proposals listed below are part of the genomics/cell biology/disease cluster:

1. C. elegans neurobiologist to be jointly appointed to Zoology and Biotech

2. Plant genomics to be jointly appointed to Botany and Biotech

3. Subcellular biologist to be jointly appointed to Microbiology and Zoology

4. Tissue engineering position to be jointly appointed to Biotech and Applied Sciences

5. Plant Natural Products to be jointly appointed to Botany and Chemistry

As well other 21^st century chairs proposed for future 21^st century chair proposals include from Botany (Cell Biology, Plant development biology, Plant molecular biology), Biotech (Functional genomics), Microbiology (Inate immunity), Zoology (Neural development, Cell communication, Evolution of developmental control processes).

Teaching:

      The Biology program is offered collaboratively by the Departments of Botany, Microbiology & Immunology, and Zoology, with 'elective' courses offered for credit by departments in the Faculty of Medicine, including Anatomy, Biochemistry, Medical Genetics and Physiology.  We envisage that this arrangement would continue if a cell and developmental biology unit contributed to the Biology program.  At present, there are cell, genetics, developmental biology, biochemistry, and structural biology courses taught in three faculties, and many departments.  This creates needless overlap and a waste of resources for the faculty.  A cell and developmental biology unit would:

1.       consolidate teaching reducing the total number of courses taught,

2.       ensure more thorough and integrated coverage,

3.       give visibility to the disciplines in the eyes of students,

4.       use faculty more efficiently (reduce costs) and effectively. 

We intend to share teaching, ensure that the expertise of faculty is used in the most effective way, and to use a mix of large and small classes, and seminar courses to maximize the student learning experience.

Draft Graduate Program:

Goals:  The goals of the Cell Biology graduate program are to ensure that students:

• Understand the fundamentals of Cell Biology, Genetics, Molecular Biology, and Developmental Biology.

•  Appreciate the conserved scientific approaches common to many disciplines (i.e. descriptive work, hypothesis testing, perturbing the system (loss of function), transplant experiments (gain of function), and learn the value of common tools like microscopy, genomics, molecular biology, protein biochemistry and genetics.

• Learn the unique and powerful approaches available in different systems (i.e. model organisms, tissue culture cells, transgenic organisms)

• Apply their understanding of cell biology to both academic and industrial research.

• Integrate and understand research literature over a broad range of fields and have the ability to apply their expertise to the questions involved in a broad range of biological issues.

• Gain experience in the oral presentations in both informal (Journal Club) and formal (Seminar) settings.

• Learn to write coherent reports, literature reviews, grant proposals.

• Access databases and use basic computer programs.

Core courses -

CDB 500A - Rotation studies  (6 credit) (established as ZOO500A which will be used initially until CDB500 is established)

The goal is have incoming graduate students 'rotate' between laboratories to gain an understanding of the different laboratories available in the cell biology group.  Each student will spend time in three consecutive laboratories and be responsible for writing a report and presenting the results of one of the rotations in the annual group seminar.  At the end of the rotation period the student is then formally accepted into one of the laboratories.  This system is based on the rotation system that is utilized in many U.S. universities and in a number of departments in Canadian universities.  The advantages of this system are that the student gains experience in a number of different experimental systems, is exposed to the breadth of research available in the Cell Biology group and that both the supervisor and the student has an opportunity to determine whether they should commit to either taking on the student or staying in the laboratory. 

This system though requires that the student be funded for the first year by other means than the traditional methods.  This system can be funded in a number of ways.  These include splitting the stipend of the student through the labs involved in the student's rotation.  Obtaining supporting funds to base training grants on. 

  BIOL 530 - Cell Biology Grad Class (3 credit) (established course, well attended)

Interactive, team-taught course with single instructor holding major responsibility.  Introduction to current research in cell biology and the facilities available at UBC.

  BIOL 5XX - Annual seminar (3 credit) (to be established)

Annual seminar presentation to the group.  A weekly seminar series will be set up such that over the course of the year each student will present their thesis work in a formal seminar to the entire group.  Each student will have to present once a year to gain full credit.   

Elective courses

A) Seminar format (i.e. Paper presentations)

• Anat 504 - Developmental Biology (3 credit)

• Micro 502/Medg 510 - Advanced Immunology (3 credit)

• Botany 544 - Plant Cell and Molecular Biology (3 credit)

• Micro 507 - Pathogenesis and Immunology (3 credit)

• Medgen 540 - Seminar in medical genetics (3 credit)

  B) Non seminar format

• Gene 502 - Genetics (3 credit)

• Nrsc 500 - Neuroscience I (6 credit)

• Nrsc 501 - Neuroscience II (6 credit)

• Medicine 590 - Molecular regulation of cell growth and differentiation (3 credit)

• Bioc 510 - Nucleic acids: Structure and function (3 credit)

• Medgen 505 - Genome analysis (3 credit)

• Medgen 520/530 - integrated pair of PBL sections in Human Genetics

C) Other 400 level courses (3 credit) often used

• Medg 420 principles of human molecular genetics  

• Medg 421 - Neoplasia Biology

• Micb 402 - Immunology

• Bioc 402 - Proteins

• Bioc 410 - Nucleic Acids

• Biol 437 - Molecular lab

• Biol 432 - Advanced Genetics

• Biol 433 - Plant Genetics

• Biol 463 - Developmental Genetics

• Biol 455 - Comparative Neurobiology

• Biol 458 - Developmental Neurobiology

Draft Undergraduate Program:

The basic plan is to retain the current core courses in Cell Biology, Genetics, Biochemistry, Development and Cell Physiology.  We plan to build on this core a small suite of high quality fourth year courses.

  2^nd year:

Core Cell Biology Lectures courses:      BIOL 200, MICRO 202, ANAT 390

  3^rd year: (limited to 100 -120 students = the capacity of Biology 350)

Core Cell Biology Lecture course :                    BIOL 3XX and 3YY                            6 credits

Core Genetics:                                                  BIOL 334, BIOL 335                          6 credits

Core Biochemistry:                                           BIOL 201, BIOC 302                          6 credits

Core Developmental Biology:                            BIOL 331                                            3 credits

Core Cell Physiology:                                       BIOL 350                                            6 credits

  4^th year:

Requirements:

Two Advanced labs

BIOL 430

  - limited enrollment 24 students each

- popular labs offered every term, depending on expense

- rotate offerings, every other year depending on lecturer availability

 Labs:                BIOL 432/337 - Advanced Genetics (add plant component)

                        BIOL 4WW - Advanced Plant Lab (or consolidate with Genetics)

                        BIOL 437 - Advanced Molecular Lab (given by Biotech)

                        BIOL 4XX - Advanced Cell Biology or Cell Physiology Lab

                        BIOL 4YY - Advanced Neurobiology Lab

                        BIOL 4ZZ - Advanced Immunology Lab

  Core Course:    BIOL 430

A seminar/paper presentation course for undergraduates with rotating instructors. 

4 sections are offered per year and topics would vary depending on instructor.