Funds are requested to support the Gordon Conference on Cell Contact and Adhesion. This conference first met in 1973. It has convened every other year since that time. All together there have been 11 sessions. Each session has been highly oversubscribed, thus demonstrating a sustained interest over the past 20 years in this general field by the academic community. The 1995 conference has been organized to avoid as much as possible an overlap in topics and speakers of other related conferences. The topic emphasize areas of recent progress and are of interest to a diverse community of scientists including molecular biologists, cell biologists, developmental biologists, neurobiologists, oncologists, hematologists, cancer biologists, and others. The topics covered will examine the molecular mechanisms controlling cell interactions in several interesting biological systems. They will include discussions of specific cell surface receptors, such as those in the integrin, immunoglobulin, cadherin and selectin families. The genes for several adhesion molecules have been deleted from the mouse genome by the technique of homologous recombination. Exciting new information from several such experiments will be presented, thus revealing the fundamental importance of these genes during development and/or in the mature animal. Also there will be a strong emphasis on signaling through adhesion receptors. For example, the association of adhesion receptors with tyrosine kinases and phosphatases will be discussed, as will the regulation of adhesive events by G proteins. A new focus in this conference will be the role of adhesion receptors in tumor suppression. In particular, the association between catenins and APC, cadherins, and the role of the DCC adhesion molecule will be explored. This conference aims to bring together a group of scientists and students with diverse systems and approaches to allow more complete understanding of the common theme of cell adhesion mechanisms.
