This award supports a Conference on Cell-Cell Communication in Bacteria (CCCB). The organizers have designed a program that showcases innovative new research based on theory-driven, multi-disciplinary approaches and the use of novel technologies to garner a deeper understanding of the cell-cell communication underpinning coordinated group behaviors in bacteria. Such pheromone- or metabolite-mediated signaling within and between species of microbes, often termed ?quorum sensing?, represents a biological phenomenon of great importance to life on earth by controlling a range of microbial behaviors and processes with enormous consequences for human and animal health, agriculture, energy and the environment. The budget requested will be used to support travel of beginning investigators, as well as postdoctoral and student researchers, several of whom will be selected for oral presentations based on their submitted conference abstracts. The organizers of the conference have made a particular effort to be broadly inclusive in terms of gender balance and minority participation.
The conference, which will be held in October 2014 in San Antonio Texas, will bring together leading researchers in the field including international participants. The CCCB organizers present a forward-thinking agenda at this conference with presentations by theorists, computational biologists, engineers, chemists and physicists. Some sessions focus on host-pathogen interactions and the role of cell-cell communication in pathogenesis, symbiosis and mutualism. Other areas focus on understanding how bacterial pheromone-mediated signaling affects host plants or animals, which are now known to have evolved mechanisms to detect, disrupt, and respond to microbial signals.
