This application is for partial support of the meeting """"""""Advances in Nanostructural Proteomics II"""""""" to be held at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor Maine on October 3-6, 2002. Just as the complete gene list will advance the diagnosis and treatment of human genetic disorders, insight into genome structure and function will constitute a solid foundation for understanding the molecular basis of development and disease. There is rapidly growing evidence that the position of a gene on a chromosome and within the nucleus influences its activation. This is accompanied by increasing recognition that the cis-acting sequences that control expression also affect the spatial position of a gene in the nucleus and its association with transcriptionally inactive or permissive chromatin domains. Thus, local and higher order interactions that result in the differential arrangement of genes in the nucleus have the potential to make a substantial contribution to the establishment of global patterns of cell type specific gene expression. In this regard, any of the methodological approaches currently used to approach large-scale nuclear architecture may be highly useful also to study genome structure at the mesoscale and especially at the nanoscale level. In addition, new techniques using synchrotron radiation and new markers produced by nanotechnology methods are providing efficient tools to study the genome nanostructure. This meeting will provide a forum for an interdisciplinary discussion on the short and long-term research goals for correlating genuine architecture with biological function. A focused approach connecting biology, nanotechnology, and mathematical modeling is required to make rapid progress in this fundamental and important research area. We anticipate that worldwide leading scientists in the disciplines needed for a comprehensive approach to functional genomics will participate in the discussions. The meeting, first held in October of 2001, has become the springboard for the newly formed """"""""Genome Architecture Consortium"""""""" which will continue to produce reports identifying the research needs, opportunities, and challenges in determining and understanding the structure of the genome and its relationship to biological function.
| O'Brien, Timothy P; Bult, Carol J; Cremer, Christoph et al. (2003) Genome function and nuclear architecture: from gene expression to nanoscience. Genome Res 13:1029-41 |
