Translational Research Support Core (TRSC)

The TRSC facilitates research that progresses environmental health sciences from basic studies to applications in affected people and communities.

About this Core

The TRSC will be the major driver of activities that are central to the core mission of TiCER: to identify and address environmental health concerns through multidisciplinary collaborations between Center members and other stakeholders. The primary goal of this core is to facilitate bidirectional translational studies ranging from community-based human cohorts to population-based experimental studies in mice, to human and mouse inter-individual variability and organotypic in vitro models. To accomplish this, the Center’s translational research will be integrated into causes and mechanisms of environmental health risks in three important structural areas: human translational studies, mouse translational studies, and in vitro translational studies.

Fresh Lab

The Framework for Research on the Environment, Sustainability, and Health (FRESH) lab maintains specialized hardware and software to carry out CPU-intensive data analysis and environmental modeling. Through the FRESH lab, researchers can use a variety of health and exposure databases to acquire, analyze, and archive data. FRESH staff, including Dr. Itza Mendoza-Sanchez,  oversee data use and HIPAA and IRB compliance.

Databases Available:

• National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES): health and nutritional data for adults and children, including chemical exposure data
• Vital Statistics Data (VSA): information related to birth outcomes and infant mortality
• National Health Care Surveys (NHCS): national survey data on ambulatory medical care, surgery, and medical discharge
• Texas Health Care Information Collection (THCIC): inpatient, outpatient, and emergency department data from the Texas Department of State Health Services
• US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data repositories: Air Quality Data for the CDC National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network, Consolidated Human Activity Database, Environmental Geophysics, ExpoCast, and Human Exposure Database System
• Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) data repositories: information related to air quality, water contamination, and waste management. These include the Texas Air Monitoring Information System, GeoTAM Viewer, Point Source Emissions Inventory, Texas Air Emissions Repository, Meteorological Data Sets by county, Texas Water Information, and Texas Waste Management
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA): data for landfills, scrap tires, industrial and hazardous waste, petroleum storage tanks, and dry cleaners; geospatial data, including regulatory and administrative boundaries
• Restricted Access Databases housed in the Texas Research Data Center, part of the national network coordinated by the US Census Bureau: restricted access versions of US Decennial censuses and demographic surveys such as American Community, Current Population, American Housing, National Survey of Family Growth, National Crime Victimization, National Health Interview, National Health and Nutrition Examination, the National Longitudinal Mortality Study, detailed vital statistics files, the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, and others

TIGSS

The Texas A&M Institute for Genome Sciences and Society (TIGSS) is located in the Reynolds Medical Building on the fourth floor. TIGSS is committed to fostering innovation and collaboration, enabling researchers to explore the fundamental mechanisms underlying life, health, and disease. Through their comprehensive range of advanced genomic and phenotyping tools, they aim to facilitate breakthroughs in personalized medicine, precision agriculture, evolutionary biology, and other fields that rely on a deep understanding of genomics and phenotypic characterization. TIGSS strives to be a trusted partner, offering customized solutions tailored to the specific needs of their clients. Their team of highly skilled experts is dedicated to providing exceptional support, ensuring that researchers have access to cutting-edge technologies, robust data analysis, and comprehensive training.

TIGSS is comprised of three service cores, developed to enable your research and provide access to gold-standard instrumentation operated by dedicated research staff: the Texas Preclinical Phenotyping Core (TPPC), the Molecular Genomics Core (MGC), and the TIGSS Bioinformatics Core.

The Texas A&M Preclinical Phenotyping Core houses various instruments to measure and quantify physiology and behavior. With their extensive experience in preclinical phenotyping using a variety of mouse and other small animal models, TPPC can help guide you at every step in your translational research.  At the planning stages, they provide consulting to determine the optimal molecular, physiological, and behavioral assays to address your research goals.  TPPC also maintains a wide suite of equipment supporting metabolic, musculoskeletal, cardiovascular,  behavioral, cancer, immune, histology, and other molecular assays for detailed phenotyping of animal models and provide access for generating preliminary data for new grant applications. Additionally, TPPC provides access to a unique mouse genetic reference population, the Collaborative Cross, which enables investigations into the genetic bases and health and disease-related traits and environmental responses. At the TPPC, they offer fee-for-service analysis and access to a large quantity of shared workspace instrumentation. Please visit both their Services page and Shared Workspace page to see the complete list of how TPPC can help your research. Please fill out a Contact Us Form or email TPPC@tamu.edu for training, questions, and experimental support!

The Molecular Genomics Core offers a fee-for-service, one-stop shop for all your sequencing needs. Whether you need single plasmid isolation, to large scale library preparation, QC, and sequencing on the Illumina or Oxford Nanopore platforms. MGC has you covered! They have even expanded to do adventitious agent testing in cooperation with the TIGSS Bioinformatics Core! Please fill out a Contact Us Form or email genome_core@tamu.edu today to start your sequencing project! MGC also hosts a shared workspace for researchers to utilize equipment to fast-track and enable their research. Please visit the Shared Workspace page for more details.

The TIGSS Bioinformatics Core was established in 2012 in recognition of the ever evolving problem of big data in life sciences-based research and industry. In recent years, the increase of massive biological data coupled with the need for specific and comprehensive computational analysis has made bioinformatics an ever emerging discipline in life sciences. TIGSS Bioinformatics Core provides a wide-array of services that include start-to-finish sequencing data analysis to custom pipeline and software development. TIGSS’ bioinformaticians have decades of experience with backgrounds in metagenomics, differential gene expressions, cancer biology, plant biochemistry, protein structure prediction, comparative genomics, and so much more. Their mission is to to provide data analysis that accelerates your research and decreases time to discovery. Please fill out a Contact Us Form or email bioinformatics-core@tamu.edu to start a free initial consultation or to generate a quote.

For general information, contact tigss@tamu.edu.

Available Resources:

• Collaborative Cross (CC) population mouse strains: the mouse colony consists of 40 CC strains currently breeding, with a target of 48 CC strains by the end of 2017. Recombinant Inbred (RI) Strains can be derived from these CC lines; both CC and RI strains are available for Center members.
• CC-derived MEF and iPSC lines: mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEF) are available from all in-house mouse CC lines. iPSCs of both sexes can be produced from the MEF lines.

Core Members