(taken from the application) The applicant requests partial support for the Keystone Conference on """"""""Mechanisms of Eukaryotic Transcriptional Regulation"""""""" to be held during Feb. 26-Mar. 4, 2001 in Santa Fe, NM. The purpose of holding a meeting at this time is to bring together leading scientists and promising young investigators to present their latest findings in the rapidly moving and increasingly multidisciplinary field of transcriptional regulation. The control of gene expression is a multi-step process that involves modulation of chromatin structure to facilitate the interaction of RNA polymerase and transcription factors with the DNA template as well as direct regulation of polymerase during the preinitiation, initiation, and elongation stages of transcription. Recently, high-resolution crystallographic and NMR structures of the nucleosome, RNA polymerase, and complexes that regulate transcriptional activation, elongation, and histone acetylation have been determined. The information from these structural studies, together with ongoing biochemical analyses of transcriptional initiation and elongation, are providing an ever-clearer picture of the molecular interactions underlying transcriptional control. Additionally, the discovery and subsequent characterization of protein complexes and enzymatic activities that function as chromatin remodeling machines, co-activators, co-repressors, or mediators of transcription factors are unraveling many of the sophisticated regulatory mechanisms that integrate physiological signals within higher organisms. Important new information is also being generated concerning gene control at the chromosomal level and by changes in nuclear localization. Moreover, whole genome analysis is providing new insight into transcriptional regulatory circuitry at the cellular and organismal levels. Taken together, the information presented at this conference has direct relevance to our understanding of aberrant control mechanisms that underlie many human diseases. The focus of this meeting is to examine each major level of transcriptional regulation in detail and develop a coherent understanding of how specificity of gene expression is achieved in a chromosomal and a physiological context. Participation at this meeting should be of particular importance to the careers of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows hoping to specialize in this area of research.
