U.S.-Australia Seminar: New Frontiers in Cellular Interactions in Cnidarian/Dinoflagellate Symbioses

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0605804WeisThis award supports the participation of American researchers, postdocs and graduate students in a U.S.- Australia joint workshop on new frontiers in cellular interactions in cnidarian/dinoflagellate symbioses to be held on Heron Island in Australia. The co-organizers are Professor Virginia Weis at Oregon State University and Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Many cnidarians, including corals, engage in an endosymbiosis with photosynthetic dinoflagellates. These associations are of global significance as corals form both the trophic and structural foundation of coral reef ecosystems. Coral reefs are in decline worldwide due in large part to the phenomenon of coral bleaching, which results from the breakdown of the symbiotic partnership. Insight into the cellular mechanisms responsible for bleaching has been hampered by our lack of understanding of the very basic cellular and molecular events underlying the cooperative animal/dinoflagellate partnership. There is an urgent need to launch an international effort to bring investigators into coral/dinoflagellate symbioses from the fields of cell biology and other animal/microbe interaction biologists in order to provide their expertise and perspective. The workshop will bring these experts together at Heron Island Research Station on Australia s Great Barrier Reef, one of the world s premiere coral research facilities. The United States and Australia together have the world s largest concentration of coral biologists who study the symbiosis. The workshop will enable them to begin an international initiative aimed at understanding the cellular and molecular inter-partner interactions that form the foundation of corals. Insight into the nature of these processes could ultimately help us predict whether corals have the capacity to survive climate change. In addition, the increased study of the relatively understudied cnidarian and dinoflagellate cells may well reveal novel aspects of cell-cell signaling, coordinated gene regulation, cell-cycle control, and cellular morphogenesis and cytokinesis. The workshop will provide the US postdocs and graduate students an excellent opportunity to receive a global research experience, as they will participate in lab projects, field excursions and a poster session. It is anticipated that they will maintain contacts and collaborations with the foreign researchers throughout their careers. The organizers will create a website that will provide information about the workshop and its findings. In addition they will submit workshop summaries to several professional societies for publication in newsletters.