This proposal requests funds to sustain a biennial meeting entitled """"""""DNA Replication and Genome Integrity"""""""" that will be held in La Jolla, California. The next meeting will be August 11th-15th, 2004 at the Salk Institute, and every other year after that. This meeting is designed to emphasize the intersection of DNA replication with DNA repair and genome stability. Advances in this area are continuing to impact significantly on issues related to human health, including the etiology, diagnosis and treatment of cancer, aging, and a myriad of diseases related to development, the immune system, and neural degeneration. The meeting will encourage a deeper understanding of links between cellular replication and repair systems. Outstanding researchers have been invited to serve as chairs in sessions devoted to Replication Origins, Initiation, Replication Forks, Chromatin, Checkpoints, Chromosome Dynamics, DNA Repair and Recombination. These chairs will provide in-depth introductions to the most important concepts and unresolved problems in each field. All other presentations will be chosen from submitted abstracts for either oral talks or posters. In this way we will ensure that the forefront of research is presented and will encourage active participation of younger researchers. The Organizing Committee consists of four investigators from two institutions. Judith Campbell (CalTech), Susan Forsburg (Salk), Geoff Wahl (Salk), and Matthew Weitzman (Salk). This is the third meeting that we have organized on this topic. The Organizing Committee will be responsible for inviting the session chairs, for selection of the other speakers and participants from submitted abstracts, and for choosing recipients for travel awards. The meeting will be held in the Salk Conference Center, a well-organized facility with much experience in conducting international meetings. A concerted effort will be made at every stage of the planning and organization of the meeting to ensure inclusion of women and minorities. We request funds to cover the travel costs and accommodation for a Keynote speaker, each of the eight session chairs, and travel scholarships. This conference complements both temporally and geographically the current biennial DNA replication meeting held at Cold Spring Harbor in odd-numbered years. The meeting is designed to broaden significantly discussion of the most topical issues confronting eukaryotic DNA replication. Due to its West Coast location, increased participation from West Coast and Pacific labs is expected. We anticipate that the topics presented and the comfortable venue will encourage new researchers to enter this important field, as well as provide experienced researchers with the new approaches needed to make significant future advances.
