This proposal requests partial support for the 2006 Gordon Research Conference on Microbial Stress Responses to be held July 9-14, 2006 at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA. The 2006 session of this extraordinarily successful meeting will emphasize the use of cross-disciplinary approaches to study microbial stress responses. The confirmed speakers represent disciplines that approach problems in biomedical research from both the physical/computational sciences and biological sciences. Such cross-disciplinary approaches and interactions are critical to achieving the next breakthroughs in biomedical research. This meeting is also distinguished for its broad examination and cutting edge approaches to the study of stress responses. As such, it allows the cross fertilization of new ideas and approaches to the study of this important field and beyond. As indicated by the session titles, this meeting will include stress responses of pathogenic organisms induced by association with their hosts as well as the survival of organisms in their natural environment. Thus the sessions will improve our understanding of the role of bacteria in human health and disease. In addition, this year we will have a session to examine systems biology/computational approaches to dissecting stress responses networks, including single cell approaches. We will also have several speakers working on eukaryotic systems (including structural biology, DMA damage sensing and oxidative stress). The meeting will highlight new developments in metal and oxidative stress, as well as specialized and general stress responses. In addition, we are committed to diversity and our speakers include women, underrepresented minorities and new faculty. Besides the invited speakers in each session, we will choose additional speakers from submitted abstracts. In summary, this meeting will play a strategic role in advancing microbial research by integrating cutting edge, structural, molecular, and computational science approaches to the study of microbial systems and their stress responses. This meeting provides an unparalleled venue to bring together computational and experimental scientists with the aim of developing new approaches to study stress responses, thereby uncovering new knowledge important to human health and disease. ? ? ? ?
