The third FASEB Summer Conference on "Mobile Elements in Mammalian Genomes" will be held in Snowmass, CO, July 5-10, 2009. This meeting will bring together a diverse group of investigators with a common interest in mobile DNA to discuss recent advances in how mobile elements have impacted and continue to influence the functional expression and evolution of mammalian genomes. The program comprises all aspects of mobile DNA including bioinformatic, biochemical, evolutionary, and population genetic studies on mammalian transposable elements, as well as work to exploit transposable elements for saturation mutagenesis and gene delivery. Comparative genomics provides strong evidence for mobile DNA amplification, repression and extinction in evolutionary time. Recently, detailed studies of the small inhibitory RNA pathway have provided strong evidence for derepression of mobile DNA in mutants of this pathway; the emerging interface of these two fields will be represented by a new session at this meeting. There will also be increased representation of studies that define a variety of roles for sequences derived from transposable elements in genome architecture and function.
This timely conference will facilitate the sharing of exciting new findings, experimental challenges, and outstanding questions in this rapidly evolving field among students, post-doctoral trainees, and junior and senior principal investigators. Using as their criterion the quality of an investigator's submitted abstracts, the organizers of the conference have chosen a number of early-career investigators (postdoctoral fellows and assistant professors), to give talks at the meeting. This grant will provide funding to help defray the costs of participation for those among this promising group of speakers for whom those costs would be a hardship.
