FASEB SUMMER CONFERENCE--THE TETRASPANINS SUPERFAMILY

Federation Of Amer Soc For Exper Biology, Bethesda MD

Investigators

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (Applicant's Description): This application seeks partial funding for the FASEB 2000 Summer Research Conference on Tetraspanins to be held July 4-July 6 2000 in Snowmass Village, Colorado. This is the first conference ever to be dedicated to this particular superfamily of proteins. This superfamily includes a large number of evolutionarily conserved and ubiquitously expressed genes. Tetraspanins have been implicated in basic biological processes such as cell proliferation, adhesion and motility, membrane fusion and tumor metastasis. This is a relatively new field of research as the first members of this family were identified only a decade ago. The interest in the family has been growing rapidly with new members being identified in a wide range of species including mammals, nematodes, drosophila and Schistosomes. Moreover, known members are being rediscovered continuously by a variety of functional assays. For example, one member of the family was identified last year as the putative receptor for hepatitis c virus. Because of the involvement of tetraspanins in multiple cellular activities, researchers in this field come from different scientific disciplines including immunology, neurobiology, adhesion, cancer research, and virology. To date, communications in this field have been limited to publications, exchange of reagents, and to occasional contacts between individual scientists. This conference is the inaugural tetraspanin research meeting where all interested scientists will meet in person. This will be extremely beneficial for future collaborative studies focused on understanding the mechanism of action of this superfamily of proteins. Purpose of the Conference: 1. To assemble investigators working in this rapidly evolving field to meet each other, to present unpublished data and to discuss questions unique to our field. The conference is aimed at bringing together senior scientists, some with long-term involvement, and newcomers to the field who have encountered tetraspanins in unrelated fields of research. An important mission of this conference is to give an opportunity to junior scientists to present unpublished studies via an abstract-driven presentation mechanism. 2. To stimulate future interactions among investigators from diverse disciplines 3. To identify experimental approaches to unsolved questions in the field. 4. To tackle nomenclature issues. 5. To summarize the current knowledge of the field in an updated review to be published in a high profile scientific journal.