Evolution of the First Nervous Systems II, May 13-15, 2014, Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience at the University of Florida

该奖项支持一个名为第一神经系统II的国际会议。这次为期三天的会议将重温1989年举行的类似会议，并于2014年5月在佛罗里达大学惠特尼海洋生物科学实验室举行。 演讲者将涵盖一系列相关的主题，重点是基础后生动物的生殖发育（例如，栉水母和刺胞动物），其中神经系统首先被代表，并且到更早的群体（例如，海绵），其中一些神经系统的组成部分已被确定。 会议将讨论几个重要问题，包括神经系统何时首次出现在进化中，神经系统是出现一次还是多次，定义神经元的分子工具包（例如，电压门控离子通道，神经递质和它们的受体）来自哪里，以及它们是如何被利用来制造第一个神经元的，以及整个神经系统进化主题的一个非常引人注目的问题，什么是神经元？会议记录将在《实验生物学杂志》特刊上发表，其中将有一章综述就上述具体问题组织讨论的内容。这次会议将提供前所未有的洞察到动物进化中最重要的事件之一，神经系统的出现，并在这样做，提供了一个基线，从跟踪神经系统的进化，并最终，人类大脑。会议将通过在线期刊和会议向全球受众宣传，组织者正在作出战略努力，让文科学院和少数民族服务机构的本科生参加。

This award supports an international conference entitled Evolution of the First Nervous Systems II. This three day meeting will revisit a similarly titled conference held in 1989, and take place in May, 2014 at the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience of the University of Florida. Speakers will cover a range of pertinent topics, with an emphasis paid to the phylogeny of basal metazoans (e.g., ctenophores and cnidarians), where nervous systems are first represented and to earlier groups (e.g., sponges) where some components of nervous systems have been identified. The meeting will address several important questions including when nervous systems first appeared in evolution, whether nervous systems emerged once, or multiple times, where the molecular tool kits that define neurons (e.g., voltage-gated ion channels, neurotransmitters and their receptors) came from and how they were harnessed to make the first neurons, and the very compelling question that underlies the whole topic of nervous system evolution, what is a neuron? The proceedings of the meeting will be published in a special issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology and will include a chapter that will synthesize the content of organized discussions on specific questions such as those listed above. This meeting will provide unprecedented insight into one of the most significant events in animal evolution, the appearance of the nervous system and, in doing so, provide a baseline from which to trace the evolution of nervous systems and, ultimately, the human brain. The meeting will be promoted to a global audience through on-line journals and meetings, and a strategic effort is being made by the organizers to involve undergraduate students from liberal arts colleges and minority serving institutions.