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一个研讨会，讨论蛋白质结构和功能进化研究的现状和未来发展。这次双边会谈是由华盛顿大学的汉斯·纽拉特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分子生物学的主要中心之一。由杰出的美国和FRG蛋白质化学家和分子生物学家组成的小组将重点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因其特殊的生物学功能、独特的结构和/或其进化兴趣而被选中。这次会议将导致分子生物学、蛋白质化学和蛋白质进化研究的更积极的整合，并推动对决定蛋白质结构折叠模式的因素的理解。它们的功能表达和复杂蛋白质分子的进化。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，源于蛋白质是由基因剪接和改组的产物结构域和功能域组成的认识。虽然在过去，结构/功能关系的分析一直针对蛋白质分子作为一个整体，但这种方法已经改变，因为人们认识到，除了最小的蛋白质分子外，所有蛋白质分子都是在进化过程中从基因库中看似无关的来源招募的亚结构或结构域的组装。结构域与基因组DNA组织的关系是对蛋白质进化感兴趣的分子生物学家面临的最有趣的问题之一。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.