Daily and seasonal cues, such as changing light levels, are important environmental signals that help to regulate behavior, physiology and reproduction in diverse organisms. Circadian clocks are internal molecular pathways that allow organisms to respond to these environmental cues. This proposal will support a symposium titled "Keeping Time during Animal Evolution: Conservation and Innovation of the Circadian Clock" at the January 2013 Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology to be held in San Francisco, California. This symposium will highlight current research related to the circadian clock from diverse animals, including sponges, cnidarians, insects, and vertebrates. The overall aim of the symposium is to bring together researchers utilizing a range of organismal models and approaches, to develop an integrative understanding of the circadian clock in animal ecology, and evolution and to foster discussions for collaborative projects to propel this field into the future. This symposium will include oral presentations by 11 speakers who have committed to presenting novel, integrative research related to the circadian clock. These speakers include 1 postdoc, 1 assistant professor, 3 associate professors, and 6 full professors. Additionally, this award will provide partial funding for participation of 3 graduate students in a complementary session. The student travel funds will be targeted aggressively toward members of underrepresented groups. Three of the speakers are women and two are international experts (England, Germany). For domestic speakers, the institutions represented are located throughout the United States and represent universities (6 speakers) and research institutions (3 speakers). The collection of speakers represents the first major effort to bring together a diverse panel of researchers in animal circadian biology, with a focus on the evolution and ecology of this critical signaling network. This symposium will create a synergism of leaders in this field with new researchers, both students and early career faculty. The abstracts from this symposium will be published on the SICB website with a dedicated page developed to highlight this symposium (www.sicb.org/meetings/2013/symposia/index.php). All symposium participants will submit manuscripts for publication in the society's journal, Integrative and Comparative Biology (www.sicb.org/publications/icb.php3), which is available electronically and indexed by many databases including NCBI/Pubmed. This volume of publications will serve as a collection of novel data as well as synthesized results and theory to propel the field of comparative circadian biology into the future.
Overall: This award supported a research symposium at the 2013 annual meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology. The symposium highlighted current research related to the circadian clock from diverse animals spanning the kingdom, including sponges, cnidarians, insects, and vertebrates, by utilizing a variety of techniques, including high throughput sequencing, protein-level interactions, cellular biology and physiology, and field studies. The symposium included 11 oral presentations of novel, integrative research related to the circadian clock. While most (9) of the speakers are faculty members, we were also able to provide two advanced graduate students with a valuable opportunity to showcase their research. Three of the talks were given by women and three by international experts (England, Germany, Australia). For domestic speakers, the institutions represented are located throughout the United States and represented universities (6 speakers) and research institutions (2 speakers). The symposium was the first major effort to bring together a diverse panel of researchers in animal circadian biology, with a focus on the evolution and ecology of this critical signaling network. The symposium resulted in publication of nine papers within the journal Integrative & Comparative Biology, which is available electronically and indexed by many databases including NCBI/Pubmed. Intellectual Merit: Circadian rhythms regulate many aspects of physiology and behavior in organisms ranging from cyanobacteria to animals, plants, fungi and protists. The award supported a symposium that resulted in a series of publications within Integrative & Comparative Biology. The presentations and papers examined conserved aspects of circadian signaling as well as novel components within particular animal groups. Broader Impacts: The award provided career development opportunities for two graduate students who presented research within the symposium. The symposium introduction and three research talks were given by women. Three talks by international experts provided opportunities to develop new collaborative relationships. The meeting abstracts are freely available, and the resulting publications, assembled within a journal issue, provide synthesis of the current state-of-knowledge regarding aspects of circadian signaling in diverse animal groups.
