This proposal is to defray room and board costs for participants attending the West Coast Regional Developmental Biology Conference in 1988. The conference is to be held at Asilomar, California, on March 6- 9. The meeting will include 24 invited speakers and a formal poster session in which all attendees will be invited to present their results and ideas. The invited speakers include professors, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students; three additional graduate student speakers will be chosen at the meeting based on their poster presentations. The general topic of the meeting is specification of cell type and pattern; this will be subdivided into five sessions: 1. Specification of cell type and pattern by intracellular factors. 2. Specification of cell type and pattern by cell-cell contact or proximity. 3. Specification of cell type and pattern by diffusible factors. 4. Genetic approaches to cell type and pattern specification. 5.Cell type-specific gene regulation. These meetings have provided important opportunities for developmental biologists at all levels to meet with their colleagues within the region.
