? Partial support is requested for the 2003 Gordon Research Conference on Motile and Contractile Systems to be held June 29 -July 4, 2003 at Colby-Sawyer College in New Hampshire. The purpose of this conference is to encourage the transfer of ideas and information within the community of scientists who work at the forefront of cytoskeletal research, an area that has long been recognized as critical for understanding fundamental biological processes. The focus of the conference will be the regulation of the assembly, dynamics and interactions of actin filaments, microtubules and motor proteins and how they contribute to cell form and function. These cytoskeletal elements are essential for life in eukaryotes, making central contributions to cell motility, cell signalling, membrane trafficking, cell division, cell polarity, and the development of multicellular organisms. Actin, microtubules and motors are important for many normal physiological functions including wound healing, pathogen-cell interactions, cell-mediated immunity and embryogenesis. Moreover, cytoskeletal defects underly many pathological human conditions including musculoskeletal and neurodegenerative diseases, oncogenesis, respiratory diseases, infertility, and congenital blindness and deafness. The 2003 conference will focus on dynamics of cytoskeletal elements in living cells, and the functions of these complexes in cell locomotion, intracellular transport of membrane-bounded vesicles and mRNAs, wound healing, chromosome segregation and cell division, neuronal organization, and tissue morphogenesis in development. Because of its breadth and interdisciplinary nature, the Motile and Contractile Systems Gordon Conference has continued to play a role in the field, despite the proliferation of subspecialty meetings. The conference will feature a Keynote Lecture by Dr. Lewis Tilney who will discuss how actin filaments define cell form using the Drosophila bristle as a model system. Approximately 60 research scientists will make formal presentations in eight lecture/discussion sessions. About one third of these presentations will be selected from the submitted abstracts to encourage participation by new investigators, postdocs and students. Conferees who do not make formal lecture contributions will be encouraged to present their recent work in a poster format. An informal Technical Tutorial will be held on one afternoon in which advantages and caveats of new developments in quantitative light microscopy and digital image analysis are discussed. ? ?
