Conference: 2024 Microbial Stress Response GRC and GRS: Dealing with the Unknown: Bacterial Stress Responses Across Time and Space

该奖项支持7月14日至19日在马萨诸塞州的霍利奥克山学院举行的2024年戈登研究研讨会和“微生物应激反应”会议。这次会议汇集了一个由200名国际科学家组成的人口统计学多元化小组，旨在了解微生物如何感知和应对具有挑战性和不断变化的环境。了解微生物如何应对压力对生物技术，生态学和环境生物学等领域具有广泛的影响，以及微生物与它们感染的宿主建立的共生和致病关系。除了由经验丰富的研究人员和新到该领域的受训人员提出的正式会谈外，还通过海报展示促进参与，以刺激研究人员之间的一对一互动。NSF支持支付旅行费用，使不同的参与者从他们的职业生涯的早期阶段出席。因此，这次会议为下一代科学家提供了重要的培训机会。细菌和真菌面临着几乎不断的各种压力源的冲击，包括营养限制，温度变化，抗生素，噬菌体，宿主免疫系统等等。他们是否能够正确地发现和应对这些压力源，在很大程度上决定了他们在激烈竞争的世界中的生存。微生物已经进化出精细调整和复杂的调节机制，通过控制基因组复制和修复、基因表达、蛋白质稳定、RNA加工以及中枢和次级代谢来响应压力。总的来说，这些反应使它们能够在一系列恶劣条件下生存。因此，描述微生物如何应对压力将阐明从细菌到人类保守的关键细胞过程的基本原则。该会议通过正式会谈和讨论会将经验丰富的研究人员与早期职业科学家聚集在一起，以鼓励非正式分享领域，如了解微生物与环境之间相互作用的新方法，特别是现代成像，遗传，宏基因组学，和计算策略的压力和竞争条件下的细菌生理学和社区结构的分析。这个奖项反映了NSF的基金会的使命是履行其法定使命，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。

This award supports the 2024 Gordon Research Seminar and Conference on “Microbial Stress Response,” held July 14-19th at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. This meeting brings together a demographically diverse group of 200 international scientists seeking to understand how microbes sense and respond to challenging and ever-changing environments. Understanding how microbes respond to stress has wide-reaching impacts on areas such as biotechnology, ecology, and environmental biology, as well as the symbiosis and pathogenesis relationships that microbes establish with the hosts they infect. In addition to formal talks presented by experienced researchers and trainees new to the field, engagement is facilitated by poster presentations to stimulate one-on-one interactions between researchers. NSF support defrays travel costs to allow attendance of diverse participants from early stages of their careers. This meeting therefore provides critical training opportunities for the next generation of scientists.Bacteria and Archaea face a nearly constant onslaught of diverse stressors, including nutrient limitations, temperature changes, antibiotics, phage, host immune systems, and more. Whether they can properly detect and respond to such stressors largely determines their survival in a world of fierce competition. Microbes have evolved finely tuned and sophisticated regulatory mechanisms for responding to stress by controlling genome duplication and repair, gene expression, proteostasis, RNA processing, and both central and secondary metabolism. Collectively, these responses enable survival in a range of harsh conditions. Thus, delineating how microbes respond to stress will elucidate the fundamental principles governing key cellular processes that are conserved from bacteria to humans. The meeting brings together seasoned investigators with early-career scientists through both formal talks and discussion sessions to encourage informal sharing on areas such as new approaches to understanding interactions between microbes and the environment, particularly modern imaging, genetic, metagenomic, and computational strategies for the analysis of bacterial physiology and community structures under conditions of stress and competition.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.