? ? This proposal requests partial support for the 4th Gordon Research Conference on Environmental Bioinorganic Chemistry (EBIC 2008) to be held in Waterville Valley, NH, 15-20 June 2008. The broad and long term goal for this conference is to understand the roles in biotic processes of elements historically called """"""""inorganic"""""""" at scales from the molecular to the global. Technical challenges will allow the investigators to overlook that living systems consist of more than carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and oxygen, but they now know that the biosphere depends on, or can be vulnerable to, a much larger portion of the Periodic Table. Moreover, while human use of some inorganic elements is ancient, modern industry and agriculture have led to unprecedented exposures of humans and their environment to toxic elements and radionuclides with costly consequences for public health. The investigators aim specifically to convene for 5 days in a lovely natural setting with 36 speakers/ discussion leaders who study bioinorganic chemistry at different scales of biological organization (molecular to ecosystem) and with diverse perspectives and tools. EBIC 2008 will open with two keynote addresses on the cellular and global dimensions of our subject. There will be seven sessions covering iron and sulfur, trace metals, mineral nutrition and homeostasis, inorganic aspects of evolution, toxicology and bioremediation, bioenergy and nanotechnology, and recent advances in bioinorganic analysis. Two pre-dinner poster sessions (2-days each) will afford all registrants the opportunity to discuss their science with each other. The conference will close with a remembrance of a seminal contributor to bioinorganic chemistry. The significance of this conference is that while other meetings focus on metallobiology at the molecular and cellular levels or include bioinorganic topics in their environmental focus, EBIC has been unique in deliberately bringing these distinct perspectives together to make connections among bioinorganic processes across spatial and temporal scales and to foster discovery of common and disparate patterns in such processes across the Periodic Table. The health relatedness of the EBIC 2008 conference is that human and animal health and both chronic disorders and defense against infectious diseases depend on adequate mineral nutrition, made possible by plant and microbial acquisition of inorganic elements directly from soil and water. In addition, modern farming, manufacturing, clinical, and military practices have substantially increased our exposure to toxic elements generating a need to understand and monitor their risks and devise strategies to protect against them. The health relatedness of the EBIC 2008 conference is that human and animal health and both chronic disorders and defense against infectious diseases depend on adequate mineral nutrition, made possible by plant and microbial acquisition of inorganic elements directly from soil and water. In addition, modern farming, manufacturing, clinical, and military practices have substantially increased our exposure to toxic elements generating a need to understand and monitor their risks and devise strategies to protect against them. ? ? ? ?
