9514329 Hendrix Partical support is requested for a conference entitled "Virus Assembly" to be held under the auspices of the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology (FASEB) from June 22 to June 27, 1996, at theVermont Academy, Saxtons River, Vermont. The purpose of the conference is to bring together scientists working on all aspects of virus assembly and structure (including the initial disassembly steps associated with viral entry into cells) for bacterial, plant, animal and human viruses. The intention is to encourage communication of ideas and hypotheses about virus assembly and structure, across the usual taxonomic barriers, and to promote dissemination of results obtained with a variety of different viruses using a variety of different experimental approaches, including biochemical and genetic methods as well as X-ray crystallography, electron microscopy and image reconstruction. There are no other confereces devoted entirely to problems of virus assembly and structure, across the viral taxonomic groups, except the previous two FASEB conferences on this topic held in 1990, 1992 and 1994. The previous conferences in this series were enormously successful and achieved the kind of communication desired. It seems likely, given the current rate of progress in this field, that the FASEB conference of 1996 will be the fourth in an ongoing series of conferences on the topic of virus assembly and structure. %%% The assembly of component parts into complete viruses is an area of intensive current study. Many aspects of this work involve both structural and biological features, and the disassembly/reassembly processes that occur when viruses enter cells. In order to bring together the latest results in these areas this conference will include most of the scientists actively engaged in this research. The conference will lead to greater understanding of the processes of viral assembly. ***
