Organelles such as nuclei, mitochondria and chloroplasts, play essential roles in cellular dynamics and function. This project will support young faculty, under-represented minority scientists, graduate students, and postdoctoral scientists in attending the 2019 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) and associated student/postdoctoral scientist-run Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) on "Organellar Channels and Transporters". These GRS and GRC will be held in West Dover, Vermont, on August 3-4 and August 4-9, 2019, respectively. The meetings will bring together scientists from many disciplines working on a wide variety of intracellular organelles in animal, plant, and fungal systems to facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations. The meetings provide unique training opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral scientists to closely interact with scientific leaders studying cellular organelles, enhancing both research and training in the field.
The meeting will consist of platform sessions, short talks, poster sessions, round tables, and informal conversations that will provide ample opportunity for sharing the latest research results as well as technical and conceptual advances and exploring collaborative possibilities. The aim is to capture the most recent discoveries in the field and the emerging trends of integration among different organelles and processes, as well as their relevance for the understanding of fundamental cell biological questions. In particular, the meetings will cover structural and functional analyses of channels and transporters that reside in various organelle membranes ranging from chloroplasts, unique to plant cells, to vacuoles shared by plant and fungal cells, to nucleus and mitochondria common to all eukaryotes.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
