The beach at Asilomar
Chair: Kimmen Sjölander, University of California, Berkeley
Co-chairs: Barbara Baker, Plant Gene Expression Center, USDA
Brian Staskawicz, University of California, Berkeley
Dan Portnoy, University of California, Berkeley
Mary Wildermuth, University of California, Berkeley
A schedule of talks is now available.
The aim of this workshop is to advance our current understanding of eukaryotic innate immunity by bringing together investigators from two distinct fields: plant disease resistance and animal innate immunity. The commonalities of the molecular mechanisms developed by plants and animals suggest a potential common origin of these pathways; the degree to which we can exploit these common themes for new discovery will be explored. We will also discuss the role of computational biology, particularly in detecting remote homologies, in protein structure prediction and in reconstructing the evolutionary histories of the protein superfamilies that make up the innate immune arsenal of eukaryotic organisms.
The workshop is being kept quite small to foster close and open discussions between participants. It is organized similarly to the Gordon Research Conferences, with talks scheduled for morning and evening, including significant time for discussion following each talk. Saturday afternoon is reserved for unstructured activities (e.g., bicycling into downtown Pacific Grove, visiting the Monterey Aquarium, walks along the beach, exploring coastal tidepools, visiting art galleries in Carmel) to foster social interactions and discussions among participants. A Poster Session will be held on the first evening of the workshop; submissions from graduate students and postdoctoral scholars are especially encouraged.
