9722896 Hernandez The "Mechanisms of Eucaryotic Transcription" conference will be an open international meeting devoted to the most recent advances in the rapidly evolving field of eucaryotic transcription. This meeting follows four highly successful meetings on the same topic held in Cold Spring Harbor in 1989, 1991, 1993, and 1995, and will be organized according to the same basic format. The meeting will be open with attendance limited only by the facilities available to a maximum of 425 participants. Oral presentations will consist of a combination of invited presentations and selected presentations from submitted abstracts. This ensures the participation of junior and senior leaders in the field and the presentation of the most exciting results emerging at the time of the meeting. The oral presentations will be complemented by poster presentations in three poster sessions, also selected from submitted abstracts. The areas covered by the meeting on "Mechanisms of Eucaryotic Transcription" include studies on 1) the structure and function of the basal transcription apparatus, 2) the regulation of RNA polymerase activity, 3) activation mechanisms involving interactions between activators and the basal transcription machinery, 4) the structure and function of regulatory complexes, 5) chromatin structure and epigenetic regulatory mechanisms, and 6) repression mechanisms. A number of eucaryotic systems including mammalian, Drosophila, and yeast, will be represented along with selected procaryotic topics to create a didactic conference. The aim of the conference, "Mechanisms of Eucaryotic Transcription", is to bring together scientists working in this rapidly developing field so that the latest results can be discussed, critically evaluated, and fitted into a general picture. Transcription of a gene is the first step in its expression. Although many meetings contain a few sessions on transcription, there are few meetings that are devoted entirely to the topic of how transcription is achiev ed and regulated in the cell. ***
