FASEB Conference on "From Unfolded Proteins in the Endoplasmic Reticulum to Disease"

Federation Of Amer Societies For Exper Biology, Rockville MD

Investigators

Abstract

The overarching objective of the project is to integrate research, education and training by strongly encouraging the active participation of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in all aspects of a FASEB Summer Research Conference. The FASEB conference on the Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) was established in 2007 to fill a critical need for an ER focused research conference. This FASEB Conference will bring together an international research community that investigates the structure, function and regulation of the endoplasmic reticulum. The conference will expose early career scientists to a broad range of experimental systems and approaches that are being used by the leading laboratories in this research field. Conference attendees are strongly encouraged to submit poster session abstracts. In addition to the thirty invited speakers, twelve additional speakers will be selected for "late breaking talks" based upon their submitted poster abstracts, giving strong preference for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. A critical objective of this FASEB conference is to stimulate discussion and the exchange of information between the established leaders in the field and early career scientists during all sessions of the meeting including the platform talks, meet the speaker sessions, and career development workshops. The FASEB summer conference on the endoplasmic reticulum is a critical driving force for the application of new technologies, development of novel concepts and fostering research collaborations between investigators with complementary expertise. Achieving the objectives of this project is critical to maintain the viability of this research field by promoting broader participation in the ER field and the development of the next generation of ER researchers. This multi-disciplinary meeting brings together a diverse international community of biochemists, cell biologists, molecular biologists, geneticists and physiologists who investigate protein homeostasis in the endoplasmic reticulum. The conference is focused on elucidating the mechanisms for biosynthesis; processing and folding of proteins in the ER; protein quality control mechanisms that discriminate between folded and misfolded proteins; ER stress response pathways that allow the cell to alleviate protein-misfolding stress; and the ER associated degradation pathway that protects cells from the toxic accumulation of unfolded protein aggregates in the ER. While there has been tremendous progress in this research field, there remain critical knowledge gaps that can now be addressed using experimental methods that were not previously available and by cross-disciplinary approaches to synergistically expand knowledge in this research field. The conference platform sessions in the morning and evening will feature the invited speakers as well as the late breaking talks, with sufficient time allocated for discussion. Meet the speaker sessions at lunch, career development workshops in the early afternoon and poster sessions in the late afternoon will facilitate interactions between meeting attendees. 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.