DESCRIPTION, OVERALL (provided by applicant): This proposal is a competitive renewal of the New York Obesity Research Center (NYORC). The NYORC has been funded through 5 competitive review cycles and currently includes facilities at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center (SLRHC) and Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC). In this cycle we add facilities and investigators at Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM), consisting of an Adipose Tissue Core and an Animal Phenotyping Core, and part of the Molecular Biology/Molecular Genetics Core. The Cores at SLRHC will be unified as a Human Phenotyping Core, consisting of Sub-Cores in Body Composition, Energy Expenditure, Hormone and Metabolite, Ingestive Behavior, and Sleep Disorders. Also at SLRHC there will be an Administrative Core to manage the Center, the Pilot/Feasibility Program (P/F), and the Biostatistics Sub-Core. The major portion of the Molecular Biology/Molecular Genetics Core will continue at CUMC. The General Clinical Research Centers at all 3 sites provide important resources for carrying out clinical and translational research, including the new Mass Spectroscopy Laboratory at CUMC. Other resources are three T32 Training Grants, a DERC at Columbia, and a DRTC at AECOM. The objectives of the Center are: (i) to bring together a critical mass of separately funded independent investigators who share a strong interest in obesity research; (ii) to manage a P/F Program and enrichment activities to promote and test new research ideas, stimulate productivity, and foster the training and development of talented new investigators, (iii) to provide member investigators with cost-efficient experimental and intellectual resources to increase productivity and the range of possible experimental venues; (iv) to bring attention to, and promote research activity in obesity, through the educational enrichment program. Our aim is to create a Center in which the critical elements in discovery constituted by animal models, genomic techniques, and mechanistic clinical investigation are integrated in a manner that encourages inter-disciplinary work and accelerated movement of hypotheses from the laboratory to testing in humans (and vice versa). Our combined institutions have the physical and intellectual resources to carry on this range of activities as envisioned by the NIH "Roadmap" and to serve as a regional resource for investigators conducting obesity research also at other institutions.