Evolution of the First Nervous Systems II, May 13-15, 2014, Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience at the University of Florida

University Of Florida, Gainesville FL

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports an international conference entitled Evolution of the First Nervous Systems II. This three day meeting will revisit a similarly titled conference held in 1989, and take place in May, 2014 at the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience of the University of Florida. Speakers will cover a range of pertinent topics, with an emphasis paid to the phylogeny of basal metazoans (e.g., ctenophores and cnidarians), where nervous systems are first represented and to earlier groups (e.g., sponges) where some components of nervous systems have been identified. The meeting will address several important questions including when nervous systems first appeared in evolution, whether nervous systems emerged once, or multiple times, where the molecular tool kits that define neurons (e.g., voltage-gated ion channels, neurotransmitters and their receptors) came from and how they were harnessed to make the first neurons, and the very compelling question that underlies the whole topic of nervous system evolution, what is a neuron? The proceedings of the meeting will be published in a special issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology and will include a chapter that will synthesize the content of organized discussions on specific questions such as those listed above. This meeting will provide unprecedented insight into one of the most significant events in animal evolution, the appearance of the nervous system and, in doing so, provide a baseline from which to trace the evolution of nervous systems and, ultimately, the human brain. The meeting will be promoted to a global audience through on-line journals and meetings, and a strategic effort is being made by the organizers to involve undergraduate students from liberal arts colleges and minority serving institutions.