Monday, December 30, 2024
12/30/2024
PROJECT SUMMARY This proposal seeks support for the 25th Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Bacterial Cell Surfaces, which will be held on June 23-28, 2024, at Mount Snow Resort (West Dover, VT) and will have an associated Gordon Research Seminar (GRS). The GRS, which is organized by and for graduate students and postdocs, will be on June 22-23, 2024, at Mount Snow. The GRC on Bacterial Cell Surfaces is unique among envelope-related conferences because it connects cutting-edge research on bacterial envelope biology to the medically important downstream consequences of the bacterial surface including infectious diseases, antibiotic resistance, and microbiome-host interactions. The conference will feature the latest, largely unpublished, and most impactful research highlighting how the bacterial surface influences and can be targeted to promote human health. It will include a diversity of topics, model systems, and approaches combining biochemistry, genetics, structural biology, cell biology, biophysics, imaging, and modeling. The oral program will contain 9 sessions: (1) Envelope Macromolecular Machines; (2) Cell Division and Morphogenesis; (3) Sensing through the Cell Envelope; (4) Coordinating and Balancing Cell Envelope Biogenesis; (5) Modification and Evolution of the Bacterial Envelope; (6) Maintenance of the Cell Envelope; (7) Targeting the Cell Envelope with Antimicrobials; (8) Interplay between the Bacterial Envelope and Communities; and (9) Envelope-dependent Behaviors. These topics will provide a platform for the development of antibacterial strategies, vaccine development, and studies of host-microbe interactions. They are of great interest to researchers conducting basic and translational research and to the mission of the NIH. In addition, the conference will include 4 poster sessions. We have selected a group of leading expert scientists, including several rising junior researchers, as speakers and discussion leaders. This group was selected by considering expertise and demographics. To provide a collegial atmosphere and foment interactions between junior and established scientists and inclusivity, we will also feature many short talks from junior scientists, facilitate roundtable discussions for junior scientists to engage with leaders of academia and pharmaceutical industries, and host a GRC Power Hour to examine issues of inclusion and diversity. To integrate the GRS and GRC, the GRS co-chairs will present a summary of their meeting at the GRC opening session and two of the short talks featured in the GRC will be selected by GRS participants through voting. Furthermore, the format of GRC meetings, with programmed discussion sessions and opportunities for informal gatherings in the afternoons and evenings, conveys a collegial atmosphere that facilitates interactions between attendees of all career stages and promotes networking and future collaborations. By bringing together researchers investigating both basic science and its downstream impact on human health, this GRC will facilitate the generation of the knowledge, new ideas and approaches, and interactions that are essential to fight infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance, and to understand the interdependence of host and its microbiota.
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