An international conference on Calcium and Cell Function will be held July 5-10, 1998, at Cooper Mountain Resort, Colorado. This conference will be held under the auspices of the Federation of the American Societies of Experimental Biology (FASEB). The conference will focus on the biochemistry, molecular biology, structure/function, and physiology of calcium as an informational ion that affects virtually every primary biological activity. Our overall goal is to bring together a diverse group of scientists working on all phases of calcium and its role in cell function. Efforts were made to include women speakers; currently 10 out of 36 speakers are women. Several junior (i.e. untenured) investigators are also on the speaker list, and additional time will be set aside for short talks based on the best posters submitted. The format of this conference will be similar to that of previous FASEB Summer Research Conferences. The topics to be covered will be: calcium influx mechanisms and the internal stores, molecular biology of calcium sensing, and roles of calcium in protein phosphorylation and dephosphorylation, exo/endocytosis, gene expression, neuronal function, genetically tractable nonvertebrate systems, and pharmaceutical screening and clinical pathology. This in the major long-standing conference in North America that focuses entirely on calcium and covers the spectrum of calcium research rather than a single subdiscipline. Particular effort has been made to minimize overlap in topics and speakers with other calcium-related meetings such as the Gordon Conference on Calcium Signaling and the 1998 Society of General Physiologists meeting on Local Calcium Signaling; the present meeting places less emphasis on the description and mechanism of generation of calcium signals and much more emphasis on the consequences of such signals for cell biology, pathology, and therapy. The sessions on genetically tractable models and pharmaceutical screening are particularly unusual and timely because calcium indicators can now be introduced into cells and transgenic organisms by molecular genetic means alone, and because calcium effects have recently become the basis for several fast-growing biotechnology applications and companies. This conference is always oversubscribed and has received high ratings from previous participants.
