This award supports a workshop on the topic of "Molecular and Cellular Aspects of Vascular Smooth Muscle" to be co-organized by the PI, from the Medical College of Georgia, and his collaborator, Dr. Kazuhiro Kohama of Gunma University Graduate School of Medicine, in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii in Fall 2006. The workshop will involve 18 U.S. participants-including 13 junior and senior faculty and five graduate students-and a comparable number of Japanese scientists. Participants are drawn from a small group of scientists in the U.S. and Japan whose research concentrates on understanding the contractile activity if vascular smooth muscle at a molecular and cellular level in cross-species models. Each investigator will be an expert in one of four processes involves in contraction and relaxation of smooth muscle function: 1) membrane excitation; 2) excitation-contraction coupling; 3) energy metabolism; and 4) chemomechanical transduction. The workshop will provide an opportunity for each expert to be informed of results of current research on the other components. Additionally, the workshop will address two aspects of comparative biology with respect to smooth muscle contraction: 1) cross species variations; and 2) regional variability within the same species (i.e. various regional vascular beds).
