U.S.-Federal Republic of Germany Joint Seminar on Dynamics of Protein Development and Function, Heidelberg (June 26 - July 1, 1988)

该奖项支持大约10名美国科学家与西德同事一起参加研讨会，讨论蛋白质结构和功能进化研究的现状和未来发展。这次主要是双边会议的会议是由华盛顿大学的汉斯·纽拉斯教授和海德堡大学的罗伯特·兹威林教授共同组织的。海德堡已成为德意志联邦共和国领先的分子生物学中心之一。美国和法国的一群杰出的蛋白质化学家和分子生物学家将集中讨论特定蛋白质和蛋白质系统的结构、功能和进化，这些蛋白质和蛋白质系统是由于其独特的生物功能、独特的结构和/或其进化兴趣而被选中的。这次会议应该导致分子生物学、蛋白质化学和蛋白质进化研究的更积极的结合，并推动理解决定蛋白质结构折叠模式、功能表达和复杂蛋白质分子进化的因素。目前对蛋白质进化的兴趣，特别是对系统发育和个体发育的兴趣，源于对蛋白质由结构和功能结构域组成的认识，这些结构域和功能域是基因剪接和改组的产物。虽然过去对结构/功能关系的分析是针对整个蛋白质分子的，但这种方法已经改变，因为人们意识到，除了最小的蛋白质分子之外，所有的蛋白质分子都是在进化过程中从基因库中看似不相关的来源招募来的亚结构或结构域的集合。结构域与基因组DNA的组织之间的关系是蛋白质进化领域的分子生物学家面临的最耐人寻味的问题之一。会议的许多议题也与生物技术的进程和潜在用途有关。

This award supports the participation of approximately ten U.S. scientists in a workshop with West German colleagues to discuss the current status and future developments in research on the evolution of protein structure and function. This largely bilateral meeting was co-organized by Professors Hans Neurath of the University of Washington and Robert Zwilling of the University of Heidelberg. Heidelberg has become one of the leading centers of molecular biology in the Federal Republic of Germany. Discussions by an outstanding group of U.S. and FRG protein chemists and molecular biologists will focus on the structure, function and evolution of specific proteins and protein systems that have been selected due to their particular biological functions, their unique structures and/or their evolutionary interest. The meeting should lead to a more active integration of molecular biology, protein chemistry and the study of protein evolution, and advance efforts to understand the factors that determine the folding pattern of protein structures, the expression of their function and the evolution of complex protein molecules. Current interest in protein evolution in general, and in phylogeny and ontogeny in particular, derives from the realization that proteins are composed of structural and functional domains which are the products of gene splicing and shuffling. While in the past, analysis of structure/function relationships has been directed toward the protein molecule as a whole, this approach has changed with the realization that all but the smallest protein molecules are assemblies of substructures or domains which have been recruited in the course of evolution from seemingly unrelated sources in the gene pool. The relation of domains to the organization of the genomic DNA is one of the most intriguing problems facing the molecular biologist interested in protein evolution. Many of the topics of the meeting are also relevant to the processes and potential uses of biotechnology.