Workshop: Genome Architecture and Dynamics 2019

William Marsh Rice University, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

The international Summer School and Workshop: Genome Architecture and Dynamics 2019 will address the physics of genome structure and function. This meeting will bring together 75 researchers and 75 graduate students, drawn from both biological and physical science, to discuss this topic, broadly construed. The meeting will take place in the Bulgarian town of Varna and will last six days. The two initial days will consist of tutorial lectures for the trainees as well as informal gatherings by the senior participants. Afterward there will be four full days of scientific lectures on the state-of-the-art of both experimental techniques and modeling approaches to this extremely exciting topical area. This award will fund the participation of the US scientists in this meeting as well as some overall logistical costs. In recent years, there has been growing excitement about using ideas from physical science to make sense of genome structure in eukaryotic cells. This workshop will be devoted to the basic mechanisms underlying chromatin dynamics and to the methods available to investigate these mechanisms. At the same time, it is clear that basic understanding will go a long way toward being able to understand, and perhaps affect for the better, the role of chromatin in diseases such as cancer and in the aging process. There are a variety of broader impacts that will arise from this meeting. For the training aspects, the organizers will recruit students either directly from the labs of senior participants or through the Physics of Living Systems graduate network. Next. Bulgaria has a long scientific tradition, and a visit to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences reveals that one of the main focus areas is chromatin structure. The Academy members welcome the opportunity to integrate their research in this area (and their students being trained as part of the research) with the overall international community and have allocated funds for the Bulgarian participants in the meeting. Thus an additional broader impact will be to broaden the international community in a manner which would clearly be helpful to everyone. The structure of the DNA molecule and its associated proteins (commonly referred to as chromatin) is of great interest, both because of the intrinsic problems of how it can be fit into the nucleus and go through various stages as the cell cycle progresses and because it has a major effect on the accessibility of genes and hence couples to cellular differentiation. The excitement has arisen due both to the increasing recognition of the importance of chromatin dynamics for cell function and to the invention of a variety of extremely powerful experimental techniques for determining chromatin properties. This meeting will bring together many of the individuals from around the world leading this field and should have the ability to accelerate focused research in this area for the coming years. The combination of cutting-edge science will enable the organizers to attract a large number of leaders in the field and make this meeting a seminal event. The United States participation in the Summer School and Workshop is supported by the Physics of Living Systems program in the Physics Division, the Molecular Biophysics, the Cellular Dynamics and Function, and the Genetic Mechanisms clusters in the Molecular and Cellular Biosciences Division. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.