9315601 Block This award supports the participation of eleven U.S. participants in a U.S.-Japan Seminar on the Molecular and Cellular Basis of Circadian Clocks, to be held in July 1994 in Honolulu, Hawaii. The co-organizers of the seminar are Gene Block, Director of the NSF Center for Biological Timing, University of Virginia, and Kenji Hasegawa, Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, Kitasato University, Japan. In addition to scientists from U.S. universities, two U.S. high school biology teachers will participate in the seminar. The research topic is timely and important given the very rapid advances in this area of biological timing. Laboratories in both countries have yielded significant new information. For example, the development of three new model systems for the molecular study of circadian timing will provide new opportunities for the application of molecular genetics to the study of biological timing. In addition, recent success with organotypic hypothalamic brain slice in mammals and with fully isolated pacemaker neurons in mollusks will provide new and exciting opportunities for the in vitro study of biological clocks. The seminar will be videotaped and will be available through the NSF Center's videotape program. ***
