A Satellite Conference on Smooth Muscle Contraction is planned in conjunction with the Congress of the International Union of Physiological Sciences which will be held in Vancouver, B.C., in July 1986. The Satellite Conference will be held in Minaki, Ontario, Canada, following the main Congress, during the period July 22-26, 1986. It is anticipated that there will be about 100 participants, 35 of whom are invited speakers. The Conference will consist of invited oral presentations and free communications via the poster format. The primary goal of the Conference is to encourage a concerted interaction of scientists examining the contractile process in smooth muscle through the study of ultrastructure, biochemistry, regulatory processes, mechanics and energetics of contraction.
The specific aims are to identify and examine important problems requiring solution, discuss strategies for dealing with these problems and to relate these findings to contraction in other muscles and non-muscle systems. In this way, progress on the different lines of research would be enhanced significantly and a new perspective on the problem as a whole would be gained. The plan is to have nine sessions during the meeting; seven sessions will consist of oral presentations on the following: ultrastructural organization, mechanical properties, chemical energetics and metabolism, biochemistry and regulation, and regulation of contraction studied in skinned and intact smooth muscles. One session will be devoted to discussion of posters, and the last session will be a summary discussion of crucial issues, emphasizing new directions of research. Speakers who have been selected have thus far expressed an interest in the meeting. The Conference will be publicized in Federation Proceedings, The Physiologist, Science, The Journal of Muscle Research and Cell Motility and various available mailing lists from the American Physiological Society's Myo-Bio Group and past conferences. The Proceedings will be published. Partial support (70%) is requested to defray travel and per diem costs for invited speakers. The proposed meeting is the only one of such scope ever held on the contractile process in smooth muscle, and certainly the first to bring investigators working on smooth muscle together at so critical a time in the state of our knowledge of smooth muscle.
