This application is for partial support of the meeting """"""""Genomics Meets Nanoscience"""""""" to be held at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine on October 9-12, 2001. Many of the methodological approaches currently used to approach large-scale nuclear architecture may be highly useful also to study genome structure at the mesoscale and especially at the nanoscale. In addition, new techniques using synchrotron radiation and new markers produced by nanotechnology methods are providing efficient tools to study the genome nanostructure. An important topic is the question as to what extent genome nanostructure can be analyzed not only in nuclei of fixed cells but also in vivo. This would open the possibility of studying movements of individual genes in living cells and allow an answer to the question of whether transcriptional activation and permanent silencing of genes is reproducibly correlated with a repositioning of particular genes. For example, it has been demonstrated that certain genes are transcriptionally active when they are positioned away from centromeric heterochromatin, but become silenced following recruitment to centromeric heterochromatin blocks. This meeting will provide a forum for an interdisciplinary discussion on the short and long-term research goals for correlating genome nanoscale structure with biological function. A focused approach connecting biology, nanotechnology, and mathematical modeling is required to make rapid progress in this fundamental and important research area. We anticipate that worldwide leading scientists in the disciplines needed for a comprehensive approach to functional genomics will participate in the discussions. The meeting will produce a report identifying the research needs, opportunities, and challenges in determining and understanding the structure of the genome and its relationship to biological function. This report will be generated during a special two-day session immediately following the meeting.
| O'Brien, Timothy P; Bult, Carol J; Cremer, Christoph et al. (2003) Genome function and nuclear architecture: from gene expression to nanoscience. Genome Res 13:1029-41 |
