This award supports the participation of approximately ten U.S. scientists in a workshop with West German colleagues to discuss the current status and future developments in research on the evolution of protein structure and function. This largely bilateral meeting was co-organized by Professors Hans Neurath of the University of Washington and Robert Zwilling of the University of Heidelberg. Heidelberg has become one of the leading centers of molecular biology in the Federal Republic of Germany. Discussions by an outstanding group of U.S. and FRG protein chemists and molecular biologists will focus on the structure, function and evolution of specific proteins and protein systems that have been selected due to their particular biological functions, their unique structures and/or their evolutionary interest. The meeting should lead to a more active integration of molecular biology, protein chemistry and the study of protein evolution, and advance efforts to understand the factors that determine the folding pattern of protein structures, the expression of their function and the evolution of complex protein molecules. Current interest in protein evolution in general, and in phylogeny and ontogeny in particular, derives from the realization that proteins are composed of structural and functional domains which are the products of gene splicing and shuffling. While in the past, analysis of structure/function relationships has been directed toward the protein molecule as a whole, this approach has changed with the realization that all but the smallest protein molecules are assemblies of substructures or domains which have been recruited in the course of evolution from seemingly unrelated sources in the gene pool. The relation of domains to the organization of the genomic DNA is one of the most intriguing problems facing the molecular biologist interested in protein evolution. Many of the topics of the meeting are also relevant to the processes and potential uses of biotechnology.
