9802699 Belfort This meeting will cover the structure, mechanism, and biological roles of enzymes that act on DNA and RNA. Included are both protein and RNA enzymes that act on nucleic acids. The meeting is designed to attract a broad cross-disciplinary spectrum of scientists from the U.S. and abroad. These include chemists, biochemists, structural and molecular biologists, geneticists and cell biologists. This meeting will be the third held by the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology (FASEB) on this general topic, the last having been in 1996. Since then, the understanding of the structure, mechanism and regulatory potential of these molecules has expanded greatly . This FASEB meeting is therefore both timely and topical. The organizers have selected discussion leaders for the nine sessions and a keynote speaker for an additional session. Speakers range from Nobel prize-winners at the forefront of their fields to accomplished young scientists destined to make inroads in their specialities.The topics to be covered at the meeting include nuclease structure & function; synthetic enzymes and novel activities; endonucleases and integrases of mobile elements; catalysis of and by RNA; recombination and repair; ligases, topoisomerases, and capping enzymes; replication proteins; and genomics. In addition, there will be a poster competition; students and post-docs with winning posters will be given the opportunity to present a talk. The meeting will provide a focus for powerful and fruitful approaches to studying fundamental features of nucleic acids and will serve as a multidisciplinary forum for the study of enzymes which interact with nucleic acids. Although meetings centering on various specialities of this general field are also held, this particular interdisciplinary mix of topics is unprecedented and promises a unique opportunity for fertile scientific exchange among scientists with interests in basic research and biotechnology.
