Two workshops and a school will be hosted by MIT in Boston on the topic of "Genome structure and function". In the Summer of 2020 an online workshop will be held and in March, 2021 the school and workshop will be held. In the online workshop students, postdocs and researchers will give technical talks and discuss their current research. During the school and workshop leading experts will teach and discuss how cells acquire their identity. What physical mechanisms are responsible for cells with the same genome in an organism to perform different function, e.g. neuron vs liver cell? The School will be focused on a set of tutorials taught by leading experts in the field on the cutting edge of the subjects pertinent to the research area noted above, and will last two days. During the Workshop at least 20 leading experts from the US and Europe will present talks based on their current research. The list of invited speakers is comprised of both physicists and biologists. Ample time will be provided for discussions. Aapproximately 75 trainees will be students in the School, and the workshop will be attended by approximately 150 individuals from academe and industry. The Summer School and Workshop will serve to help educate the next generation of scientists (physicists and biologists) about an exciting and important topic that requires work at the convergence of physics and biology. The students in the Summer School will be drawn from both Europe and the US, and potentially other countries. Moreover, many participants in the Workshop will be trainees from the laboratories of the many universities in the Boston area, thus broadening the educational outreach of the proposed meeting further. It is important to note that, while the meeting will be focused on fundamental science, mis-regulation of nuclear processes and genome architecture impact many diseased states (e.g., cancer, autoimmunity, and ageing-related diseases). Thus, there will be a number of participants in the workshop who are scientists working in the vibrant biotechnology companies in the Boston area, which will further enhance the broader impacts of the proposed Summer School and Workshop on "Genome architecture and function". Special attention will be paid to attracting students and participants from underrepresented groups.
The identity and state of a cell determines its phenotype, and thus how it interacts with other cells to regulate the functions of complex organisms. A cell's identity is determined by which regions of its genome are transcribed into proteins, and which regions are not. Cellular identity is a collective emergent property that is determined by an interplay between the structure (or architecture) of the genome inside the nucleus and nuclear functions (e.g., transcription, DNA repair), both of which are determined by cooperative interactions between many components. Thus, understanding the basic science underlying how cell identity is determined requires a convergence of approaches from physics and biology. In recent years, there has been great interest in work at this crossroad of disciplines, with the goal of developing fundamental new principles pertinent to processes that are key to understanding how complex organisms function. New experimental tools (e.g., chromatin capture methods) and theory and computer simulations (rooted in statistical physics) have begun to reveal the determinants of chromatin structure. Similarly, recent work using synergistic theory, computation, and high and super-resolution microscopy has suggested that the transcription of genes key to maintaining cell identity is regulated by the formation of active phase-separated transcriptional condensates. It is an opportune time to bring together leading physicists and biologists to discuss the most recent findings, educate trainees on these topics, and chart a path forward. The proposed Summer School and Workshop may become a landmark meeting for the field. The School and Workshops are supported by the Physics of Living Systems program in the Physics Division and the Molecular Biophysics and the Genetic Mechanisms clusters in the Molecular and Cellular Biosciences Division.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
