The 29th Fungal Genetics Conference will be held at the Asilomar Conference Center from March 14-19, 2017. This conference is one of the longest running and premiere meetings for fungal biologists. Approximately 950 scientists and students from around the US and the world will attend. A primary goal of this biennial meeting is to promote the dissemination of the latest research on all aspects of the biology of fungi with a focus on filamentous fungi. Another important goal is to promote communication and collaboration between Medical Mycologists and those working with fungal plant pathogens, saprotrophic fungi and symbiotic fungi. This has led to significant recruitment of mycologists to join the Medical Mycology research community. A better understanding of the biology and interactions of fungi with their hosts and environment continues to lead to development of new therapeutics to treat fungal diseases. The meeting will consist of four plenary sessions, four sets of concurrent sessions, and three poster sessions. Topics of the four plenary sessions are: Model fungi: biological insights beyond the kingdom, Applied mycology: superpowers of fungal heroes and villains, Systems biology: genes, genomics & genome structure and Sensing and signaling: perception of the complex world in which fungi thrive or survive. The 28 concurrent session topics include: Early-diverging fungi, Human pathogenic fungi, Circadian rhythms and photobiology, Plant-fungus interactions, Evolution and mechanisms of antifungal drug resistance, Population genomics, Fungi in the microbiome, Big data, Secondary metabolism, Mating and clonality in fungi, Fungal-bacterial interactions, Epigenetics and post-transcriptional control mechanisms, Symbiosis and commensalism, Cell Communication, Cell walls and polysaccharides, Effectors and small secreted cysteine-rich proteins, Fungi in society, Fungal multicellular development, Signal transduction and gene regulatory networks, Magnitude of fungi biodiversity, Disease epidemiology, Cytoskeletal dynamics and septa, Synthetic biology, fungal tools and fungi as tools, and Chromosome dynamics. Eight of the sixteen plenary session speakers have direct relevance to medically important fungi and eight of the 23 concurrent sessions having a significant focus on or relevance to medical mycology. Many of the other concurrent sessions will include talks on medically relevant fungi. This meeting places a strong emphasis on the participation of young scientists and students, particularly those from underrepresented groups. Many have their first opportunity to present their research at a major international conference. Funds are requested to help defray the travel and participation costs of students, postdoctoral researchers and some young scientists, and will be distributed on a need basis.
This conference brings together fungal biologists working on most major fungal systems and promotes communication and collaboration between Medical mycologists, working on fungi that cause diseases on humans and those working on plant pathogens, saprobes and symbiotic fungi. This interaction allows students working on fungi to find and pursue opportunities for research careers in Infectious Diseases towards reducing the impact of fungi on human health. Fungi also serve as important model systems to understand human disease based on the presence in fungi of many genes and metabolic and regulatory pathways related to those involved in animal diseases.
