Meeting: Fourth Topical Meeting on C. elegans Pathogenesis, Aging, Stress, Small RNA, and Metabolism, Madison, Wisconsin, July 21-24,2016

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This award will support participation of under-represented minority graduate students and postdoctoral trainees in the 4th C. elegans Topical Meeting: Pathogenesis, Aging, Stress, Small RNAs, and Metabolism to be held at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, July 21-24, 2016. Nematodes like C. elegans are ubiquitous in nature, and are important ecologically, agriculturally, and medically. Furthermore, insights gleaned from studies of C. elegans interactions with microbes are broadly applicable to many other animals. The meeting draws scientists from many different disciplines, thus proving fertile ground for new inter-disciplinary collaborations and exchange of cutting-edge ideas. As broader impacts, the Meeting is organized by junior faculty members and provides opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral trainees to present their work, thus providing opportunities for science dissemination and career development, and contributing to a strong U.S. biomedical workforce. The 2016 Meeting provides a novel program, in which break-out sessions are specifically designed to foster communication between distinguished scientists and young trainees. The award will provide support for attendance and presentations by promising young investigators, including women and underrepresented minorities as a focus. In addition dependent day-care will be available on site, which will enhance participation of young investigators, particularly women. NSF-sponsored awards for best poster (undergraduate, graduate, and postdoc categories) and for a new Worm Art show are other key innovations that promote science communication through the visual arts. Results discussed at the meeting will be disseminated to the scientific community by having abstracts accessible online at wormbase.org.As is clear from a large body of work, Host-Microbe Interactions pervade every aspect of host physiology, including its longevity, ability to confront environmental stress, its metabolism, and its epigenetic gene regulation. In any other experimental system, the study of aging, stress responses, epigenetic gene regulation by small RNA, and metabolism are often conducted with little regard for the central relevance of host-microbe interactions. Not so in C. elegans. It is now clear that the insights gleaned from C. elegans host-microbe interaction studies are broadly applicable to many animal species beyond the nematode clade. Comprehensive study of the intricate mechanisms of host-microbe interaction and their consequences on host physiology mandates an experimentally tractable model organism, of which C. elegans is unrivaled. This is the premier meeting focused on host-microbe interactions in stress responses and epigenetics of small RNA in C. elegans.