ASCB Summer Meeting: Nuclear Architecture and Disease

American Society For Cell Biology, Rockville MD

Investigators

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This meeting on Nuclear Architecture and Disease will be sponsored by the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB). Meeting topics are proposed by ASCB members and selected by a committee based on significance, timeliness, interest and the strengths of the organizers and potential speakers. This meeting will be held at Iowa State University, Ames Iowa, on July 21-24 of 2005. It will provide a cutting-edge overview of nuclear architecture, and explore novel links between nuclear architecture and human diseases including aging, cardiovascular disease, cancer, muscular dystrophy, diabetes, skin, bone and nerve disorders. The format will stimulate interdisciplinary collaborations between basic and clinical researchers, and will feature talks both by experienced visionaries and new investigators. The meeting is expected to generate novel insights into nuclear disease mechanisms and identify key future directions. A comprehensive meeting on this topic has not previously been held, in part because most links between lamins and diseases were discovered less than 5 years ago, and because recent technical advances were required to appreciate the impact of intranuclear spatial organization on the human genome. A comprehensive meeting on nuclear architecture and disease is viewed by the cell biology community as urgent to develop this field and stimulate many related fields in basic and clinical research. The meeting will include 6 keynote talks, sessions on chromosomes and gene activity, lamins and laminopathies, intra-nuclear networks and architecture, and an entire session devoted to cutting-edge work selected from abstracts. Over 40% of the platform talks will be selected from abstracts and feature primarily young investigators. There will be poster sessions to stimulate one-on-one interactions. The format will be educational and exciting to an audience of ~200, evenly distributed between trainees and junior and senior investigators. The meeting will foster intense informal discussion in search of common principals and will stimulate interest and progress in this emerging 'post-genomic' field.