DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Training Program on Infectious Disease and Basic Microbiological Mechanisms, in existence at NYU Medical School since 1979, represents a successful interdepartmental, interdisciplinary program whose purpose is to offer comprehensive training in the basic mechanisms of infectious disease and host response processes to pre-and post-doctoral students. To achieve this comprehensive approach, the Program has united the Department of Microbiology and the Department of Medical and Molecular Parasitology, and has combined them with other faculty, from the Departments of Biochemistry, Medicine, Pathology and Pediatrics, whose research interests lie in the area of infectious diseases. The faculty involved in this program has been highly productive and has been responsible for training 118 doctoral and over 200 postdoctoral students in the past ten years. The major areas of research in which training will be conducted are: 1) bacterial and viral pathogenesis; 2) mechanisms of susceptibility and host-resistance to infectious diseases; 3) regulation of prokaryotic and eukaryotic gene expression; 4) signal transduction; 5) molecular entomology and molecular basis of parasite-vector interaction; 6) humoral and cell mediated irornune responses in parasitic disease and 7) development of vaccines against parasitic diseases. The Infectious Disease Training Program integrates basic and clinical sciences into a unifying core curriculum with emphasis on the mechanisms by which bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites cause disease. This is achieved through a program of courses with emphasis on biochemistry, cell and molecular biology, seminars and supervised research in the laboratories of distinguished faculty who have attained national and international recognition for their studies. The program is unique in that it offers graduate and post-doctoral training in the only Department of Parasitology in a medical school in the U.S.A. Funds are requested for the support of 7 predoctoral and 4 post-doctoral trainees per year. Trainee research will be carried out in the laboratories of the Program faculty at New York University School of Medicine.