The objective of this application is to obtain support to pay travel for the invited discussion leaders and speakers at the Gordon Research Conference of Fertilization and the Activation of Development to be held at Holderness School, Plymouth, NH, August 6-11, 1989. This conference has been held every two years since 1974. It brings together all workers on gamete cell biology, biochemistry, molecular biology and physiology. It has been an excellent arena for the exchange of new ideas and information. It is the single most important meeting of people throughout the World who work on sperm and egg cells. This conference has been the foundation of many collaborations that yielded significant results in this most important field of research. The formal topics covered in the eight sessions will be: 1. activation and regulation of flagellar motility, 2. ion channels of sperm membranes, 3. molecular biology of gamete recognition proteins, 4. protein kinases in eggs, 5. membrane proteins of sperm, 6. phosphatidylinositol cascades and G-proteins in egg activation, 7. egg activation: surface events and sperm nuclei, and, 8. egg activation: ions and enzymes.
