This proposal requests support for a unique international meeting, the biennial Neurobiology of Drosophila conference at Cold Spring Harbor to be held in 2015, the 16th meeting in this series. For the 2015 edition, the organizers have refocused the meeting on topics of direct bearing on the central goals of the NIH Neuroscience Blueprint and BRAIN initiative, in particular the mission of NINDS, but also those of NICHD, NIDA, NIA and NIMH. In particular, this meeting will explore the latest advances that are being made in the highly successful model system the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster using the combined power of genetics, molecular biology, cell biology, electrophysiology, imaging, and behavioral analysis to address fundamental issues in neurobiology with direct relevance to human health and disease. The meeting will have seven oral sessions: i) Brain, Behavior and Evolution; ii) Sensory Systems; iii) Neural Development; iv) Synaptic Transmission and Plasticity; v) Mechanisms of Neurological Disease; vi) Glial Biology; and vii) Neural Circuits and Higher Order Nervous System Function. There will be three poster sessions presenting work drawn from each of these areas. In addition, an innovation for the 2015 meeting is the inclusion of breakout workshop sessions that will be dominated by participatory activities and cover topics of interest to Drosophila neurobiologists at all career stages. Finally, there will also be one plenary talk, the Benzer lecture, which will be given by Dr. Leslie Griffith, one of the leaders in the field of neurobiology, whose scientific contributions have fundamentally changed our understanding of the biochemical underpinnings of behavior. By vote of the previous participants, the meeting will remain of moderate size (~430 participants) in order to facilitate discussion, exchange of ideas and techniques, and to promote new collaborations in this rapidly-evolving field. All applicants will be encouraged to submit an abstract and the majority of participants will present a talk or poster. Speakers will be chosen by session leaders and meeting organizers from the most timely and interesting abstracts submitted a few months in advance of the conference: this will ensure that late-breaking science is covered in all of the talks. In the event that the conference is oversubscribed, participants will be chosen to include at least one representative from each participating laboratory. This meeting has always attracted investigators from across many stages of their careers, and has a historically excellent record of promoting the scientific development of younger investigators and women. To encourage participation by junior investigators, a graduate student will present the Elkin's Lecture, an honor given to the student who has written the best Ph.D. thesis since the previous meeting.
This Neurobiology of Drosophila conference focuses on advances made using the combined power of genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, cell biology, electrophysiology, imaging, and behavioral analysis to address fundamental issues in neurobiology using the model organism Drosophila melanogaster. A driving principle of the entire field is that the lowly fruit fly, while seeming to have little in common with humans, share many of the same genes, molecules and neural wiring - albeit far simpler - with vertebrate animals. Building on one hundred years of research in fly genetics, the fly neurobiology field is a burgeoning field of endeavor with many laboratories around the world making significant advances in the field. Understanding how these systems work in Drosophila has enormous relevance to our efforts to elucidate how these things function in higher animals, with consequences including how we think about neurological disease, brain evolution and other major themes of research in humans. Many of the research techniques that are developed for use in the fly have considerable utility in research into nervous system function in vertebrates and mammals. The aim of the conference is to provide a forum to bring together a diverse group of scientists working in different areas of the field of fly neurobiology. The meeting will be of moderate size and will have no parallel sessions so as to facilitate discussion, exchange of ideas and techniques, and to promote new collaborations in this rapidly evolving field. The scientific organizers are elected by vote of the previous participants, thus ensuring a fresh perspective on the scientific exchange. The 2015 organizers have refocused the upcoming meeting around topics and themes of direct relevance to the primary mission of the National Institutes of Health, in particular the goals of the NIH Neuroscience Blueprint and NIH BRAIN initiative. All applicants are encouraged to submit an abstract and the majority of participants wil present a talk or poster. Speakers will be chosen by session leaders and the meeting organizers from the most timely and interesting abstracts submitted a few months in advance of the conference, ensuring that late-breaking science is covered in all of the talks.
