Conference: Broadening Participation and Supporting Early-Career Scientists at the International Polyploidy Conference, May 9-12, 2023 in Palm Coast (FL)

多倍体（全基因组复制；WGD），拥有三套或更多完整的染色体，是大多数真核生物基因组的特征。WGD是遗传学、进化、生态学以及农业和医学研究的核心。几乎所有的农作物都是多倍体，许多人体器官（如肝脏、心脏和胎盘）也是如此，至少三分之一的癌症是由WGD引起的。尽管WGD很重要，但我们对这种至关重要的物种形成机制和基因组和表型进化原料来源的理解是有限和脱节的。国际多倍体会议题为“生命之树的多倍体”，将于2023年5月9日至12日（佛罗里达州棕榈海岸）举行，汇集了来自不同领域的研究人员-细胞生物学，生理学，进化，生态学，基因组学，农业和癌症-讨论和确定来自跨生物多样性，生物组织水平和探究领域的共享多倍体细胞过程的共同点。NSF基金将用于帮助支持早期职业研究人员参加会议并参加各种网络和培训机会。多倍体横跨生命之树会议的一个中心目标是帮助揭示跨生命之树谱系和不同生物组织水平（即基因调控、细胞功能、器官形成、有机体性能、生态响应和景观水平物种分布）的WGD的共性和独特作用。这次会议代表了WGD目前孤立的研究领域，将促进对话和互动，有望导致对多倍体的新的综合理解，并为从生物多样性和生物复杂性到医学和农业的转化创新奠定基础。迄今为止，还没有一个会议明确地讨论了建立、进化、压力、发育和疾病，或考虑了主要进化支系的多倍体。在会议上，支持早期职业研究者参与和培训这些主题在不同生物体中的探索，将有望激发新一代科学家在多倍体研究方面的新方向。此外，国家科学基金的使用将有助于支持在多个轴上最大限度地实现多样性的努力：科学学科、观点、国家、地理、性别、种族、民族、机构和职业阶段。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Polyploidy (whole-genome duplication; WGD), the possession of three or more complete sets of chromosomes, characterizes the genomes of most eukaryotes. WGD is central to the study of genetics, evolution, ecology, as well as agriculture and medicine. Nearly all agricultural crops are polyploid, as are many human organs (e.g., the liver, heart, and placenta), and at least one third of all cancers arise from WGD. Despite the importance of WGD, our understanding of this critically important speciation mechanism and source of raw material for genomic and phenotypic evolution is both limited and disjointed. The International Polyploidy Conference entitled “Polyploidy Across the Tree of Life”, to be held May 9-12, 2023 (Palm Coast, FL) brings together researchers across diverse fields—cell biology, physiology, evolution, ecology, genomics, agriculture, and cancer—to discuss and identify commonalities that derive from shared polyploid cellular processes across organismal diversity, levels of biological organization, and fields of inquiry. NSF funds will be used to help support early-career researchers to attend the conference and participate in various networking and training opportunities. A central goal of the Polyploidy Across the Tree of Life Conference is to help uncover both the commonalities and distinct roles of WGD across lineages of the Tree of Life and at diverse levels of biological organization, i.e., gene regulation, cell function, organ formation, organismal performance, ecological responses, and landscape-level species distribution. This conference, with representation across currently siloed research fields of WGD, will promote dialogue and interactions that will hopefully lead to new, synthetic understanding of polyploidy and provide a foundation for translational innovations – from biodiversity and biocomplexity to medicine and agriculture. To date, no single conference has explicitly addressed establishment, evolution, stress, development, and disease or considered polyploidy across major clades of life. Supporting the participation and training of early career investigators in the exploration of these topics in diverse organisms at the conference will hopefully stimulate new directions in polyploidy research by a new generation of scientists. In addition, the use of NSF funds will help support efforts to maximize diversity across multiple axes: scientific discipline, perspective, country, geography, gender, race, ethnicity, institution, and career stage.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.