Interdisciplinary Grants in the Mathematical Sciences: Reconstructing Unobserved Hypothalamic Neuroendocrine Signals

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

This Interdisciplinary Grant in the Mathematical Sciences project is twofold: formal educational training in the biological sciences and the experience of immersion in a research laboratory environment. The principal investigator will be a visiting faculty member in the Division of Endocrinolgy, School of Medicine, University of Virginia. The composition of the total effort will be 75% coursework and 25% research and laboratory exposure. The educational and experiential components of this award will allow the PI to reach that understanding of the biological sciences, including practical laboratory aspects, which is necessary for collaborative interactions at the frontier of neuroendocrinolgy. As a simple example of the anticipated experience, a general understanding of how, and the precision by which, biomolecular (DNA, RNA, protein, steroid) concentrations are calculated within a laboratory environment will be enormously valuable. Animal and human reproduction, bodily growth, and the response to stress are but three of the many critical processes, which are regulated and controlled by (neuro-)hormones produced in the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, and remote target glands. Understanding the (mal)functioning of such neuroendocrine systems is a fundamentally important problem in contemporary biology. One of the most fascinating and challenging aspects is that the neurohormones produced in the hypothalamus, which ultimately control much of the resulting dynamics of these systems, are unobservable in most cases (for practical and ethical reasons). Guiding the award activities will be the issue of how to reconstruct such unobserved hypothalamic signals, a key link in understanding animal and human reproduction, growth, and control of physiological stress. This award will allow the PI to gain the knowledge necessary not only for collaboration at the frontier of neuroendocrinolgy, but also to design needed academic courses focusing on the important areas of computational biology, bioinformatics, and statistical genetics. The success of this award can be measured by the quality and number of both published research papers and Ph.D. theses directed in these interdisciplinary areas. The benefits of the award will be disseminated by the presentation of conference and seminar talks, publications in both the applied mathematics and the physiology literature, and publication of a book on biological modeling in space and time. This IGMS project is jointly supported by the MPS Office of Multidisciplinary Activities (OMA) and the Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS).