Funds are sought for partial support of the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Proteins for 1989 and will be used to support travel and room and board for invited speakers and young scientists. Like other GRC's the Conference on Proteins is a small, unique forum where new results can be discussed in an informal setting conductive to the exchange of ideas and the creation of plans for collaborative research. The Proteins GRC has been a biannual conference given in odd-numbered years. The 1988 conference was an experiment to determine whether a change to an annual format was warranted. A final decision about this will be made at the 1989 meeting by the attendees. Three factors have revolutionized the study of proteins in recent years. The advent of cloning technology coupled with the development of over- expression vectors has made possible the biochemical, cell-biological and structural study of many proteins hitherto only available in minute amounts. The use of directed mutagenesis provides the ability to ask and answer much more detailed and highly focussed question than have traditionally been addressable. The improvement in x-ray crystallographic methods means that many more structures are being determined. Together these techniques have evoked a renaissance in the study of proteins. The program will emphasize areas where particularly rapid progress is being made in understanding the biological function and activity of proteins in terms of their structures. Although the program is still very much in flux, we have identified the following session titles: -Energetics of Protein Folding and Unfolding, - Transport/Receptors: membranes, channels and pores, -Experimental Probes of Protein Dynamics, -Applications of tools to molecules: dihydrofolate reductase and staphylococcal nuclease, -X-ray structures, -Evolutionary and genetic probes of Structure (and the Converse), -Peptide Models
