Partial support is requested for the """"""""Fifth International Meeting on Ciliate Molecular Biology"""""""" to be held as a Gordon Conference on the Molecular Biology of Ciliated Protozoa at New England College, Henniker, New Hampshire from July 12-16, 1993. This is the fifth international meeting of ciliate biologists and it is intended to bring together researchers who are employing molecular techniques to investigate an assortment of interesting and relevant biological problems using ciliated protozoa as a model system. During the past dozen years, there has been a revival of interest in unicellular protozoa, prompted in part by the discoveries of self-splicing RNA, extensive DNA rearrangement and genome remodeling, unusual use of the genetic code, specific and highly conserved telomeric structure, and behavior/membrane mutants in these organisms. Although, this field is relatively small, it has witnessed remarkable advances which have yielded a disproportionately large amount of information relevant to our understanding of mammalian cell function. Molecular cloning, sequencing and recently gene transfer have confirmed a striking conservation of molecules and pathways across vast evolutionary distances. Although yeast has become the premier eukaryotic model for studying function in cell biology, ciliated protozoa offer several advantages over yeast such as ease in cell fractionation and cytological analyses. Moreover, some features of most eukaryotic cells are not found in S. cerevisiae or its relatives (such as cilia, flagella, basal bodies and histone H1). The purpose of this conference is to assemble for discussion a group of scientists at the forefront of research spanning the rapidly expanding field of ciliate molecular biology. The meeting will be organized into nine discussion sessions (for oral presentation) and two poster sessions, with ample time for informal exchange of observations and ideas. Approximately 140 foreign and domestic scientists will be in attendance; the participants will be selected on the basis of the quality of their work and how it will enhance the meeting. Conferees will represent all levels of scientists from graduate students to senior investigators, and will be drawn broadly from applicants with the academic governmental and industrial sectors, both within the United States and from foreign countries. The overall goal of the meeting is to build a synthesis and greater understanding of the interrelationships of the diverse ideas, concepts and areas of ciliate molecular biology to be presented.
