Medical Students
Biomedical Engineering
Sites in Education
Physiology
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The vasculature of a
living mouse ear after injection with an 800 infrared polyethylene
glycol tag. This technique was used to visualizeangiogenesis over
long Courtesy of Brant Isakson (Billaud et al, Microcirculation, 2011). |
Students in the Physiology Graduate Program aim to elucidate the cellular and molecular mechanisms of basic biological phenomena and to understand the pathological alterations of these processes that result in disease.
We emphasize interdisciplinary approaches, and integrate the insights gained at the molecular and cellular levels into the broader framework of organ function, with the goal of understanding the function of living systems at all levels.
This understanding must be based on knowledge of atomic and molecular structure and function, thus modern molecular physiologists may investigate the function of the heart by cloning a membrane channel or transport protein, expressing it and studying its kinetics through patch clamping in a model cell system, while exploring the relationship between molecular structure and function through crystallography and spectroscopy.
Because of the interdisciplinary systems approaches, members of the program are from many departments in basic sciences, clinical medicine, and in particular the Robert Berne Cardiovascular Research Center and Biomedical Engineering.
