Over the last two decades, Johns Hopkins has developed a strong presence in the field of protein folding. The common interests of the various groups led to the establishment of the annual Johns Hopkins Protein Folding Meeting in 1996. More recently, Johns Hopkins has had the good fortune to become home to a number of outstanding groups with interests in RNA, including RNA folding. As our RNA and protein communities educated one another, it became clear to us that the fields of protein and RNA folding had much in common, and that better communication could prove synergistic. Thus, beginning in 2001, our gathering was renamed the Johns Hopkins Folding Meeting. It continues to promote open and informal communication of frontier developments on all aspects of the folding problem, including contributions from experimentalists, physically oriented theoreticians, and those interested in computer-based algorithms. This meeting has attracted an international roster of participants representing the most prominent laboratories engaged in folding research. We are requesting support for the next three Johns Hopkins Folding Meetings. These will be held on a biennial cycle, in March of 2003, 2005, and 2007, at the Coolfont Conference Center, located about 2 hours from Baltimore and Washington in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. We have adopted an organizational structure that includes a steering committee, currently consisting of eight Hopkins PIs involved in protein and RNA folding research, and in which one of two meeting organizers is from outside Johns Hopkins. This structure will ensure that speakers and topics focus on the most recent developments in folding, and avoid repetition from year to year. In selecting participants for the meeting, we will obtain representation from as many labs as possible and maintain a balance between experiment and theory, and between RNA and protein. Participants will also be selected to provide a balance in gender and career level.
