We request partial funding for a FASEB conference on """"""""Advances in Tetraspanin Research"""""""" to be held at Callaway Gardens, GA, June 19-24, 2004. Tetraspanins are important in a wide range of cellular processes that regulate immune response, viral pathogenesis, fertilization, neurologic development, cell growth, differentiation, motility and the progression of cancer. Knowledge of tetraspanins is limited as the field is still young and mechanistic understanding of tetraspanin function is only recently becoming evident. One exciting new model is that tetraspanins form unique membrane microdomains analogous to the glycosphingolipid enriched """"""""rafts"""""""" which serve to partition membrane components and proteins. For tetraspanins, growing evidence suggests that these domains may mediate membrane fusion events. Such a function might explain their involvement in viral entry, sperm-egg fusion, myotube formation, exosomes, integrin recycling during motility and poorly understood aspects of cell-cell communication. These ideas are speculative but highlight the far reaching implications of tetraspanin research. This truly unique conference will bring together researchers from a rich diversity of specializations to present and discuss the latest advances in tetraspanin research. The attending investigators generally do not encounter one another at meetings within their disciplines and there is no other venue at which this highly interdisciplinary subject is addressed. This conference will provide a unique opportunity for the exchange of ideas, reagents and discoveries across disciplinary boundaries and is expected to foster collaborations that form the basis of significant advances in understanding tetraspanin biology. ? ?
