The mission of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine is to support and promote research and teaching in molecular cell biology in the School of Medicine at UCSD (University of California at San Diego). The Department was first established as an autonomous Division in 1990 and was departmentalized in 1999. It is one of only two basic science departments in the School of Medicine at UCSD (University of California at San Diego). It consists of 23 faculty, more than 100 postdoctoral scholars, ~50 graduate students and over 80 staff. The Department plays a major role in the teaching the medical student and graduate student curricula in molecular cell biology.Cell biology remains the central discipline for the postgenomic era. More than 50 years ago E. B. Wilson wrote, "The key to every biological problem must finally be sought in the cell." Nearly 150 years ago, Virchow in his famous book, Cellular Pathology wrote that "All diseases are reducible to active or passive disturbances in cells".

Today cell biology has become the central basic science discipline in Biomedical research and in medical practice. It bridges biochemistry and structural biology to clinical medicine. Modern day cell biologists have the unprecedented opportunity to understand basic cellular processes as well as their derangements in diseases in molecular termsoften referred to as Molecular Cell Biology and Molecular Medicine. Todays molecular cell biologists utilize information obtained from biochemistry, genetic, and molecular approaches as well as sophisticated morphological techniques such as deconvolution, confocal and video microscopy and electron microscopy to the study of basic problems in cell biology and molecular medicine. They also take advantage of insights gained from proteomics, genomics and bioinformatics analyses. With the mapping of the human genome, the challenge becomes to understand the role of individual proteins and genes in cell function and disease. Thus the challenging frontier for the postgenomic era is centered in modern molecular cell biology.

Graduate Studies at University of California at San Diego (UCSD) In the School of Medicine graduate training in cell biology is centered in the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program where it constitutes one of the main areas of study. There are abundant opportunities within the department to investigate problems in modern molecular cell biology with investigators who are internationally recognized and working at the cutting edge of their discipline.

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UCSD Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine Homepage