US/JAPAN SEMINAR--BIOSYNTHESIS OF NATURAL PRODUCTS

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DESCRIPTION (Applicant's Description) The 5th U.S.-Japan Seminar on the Biosynthesis of National Products will be jointly organized by Professors Heinz G. Floss, University of Washington, Seattle, Rodney B. Croteau and Norman G. Lewis, Washington State University, Pullman, in the US, and Professors Yutaka Ebizuka, Universiy of Tokyo, and Katsumi Kakinuma, Tokyo Insitute of Technology, in Japan. To be held on June 15-20, 1997 at Sun Mountain Lodge in Winthrop, State of Washington, it will bring together primarily academic participants and observers from the two counties, as well as a few leading researchers from Canada and two invited speakers from Europe. In addition to the well-established participants, it is planned to invite several junior scientists and newcomers to the field. These will be selected from a pool of candidates nominated by the core participants. A number of industrial researchers will also be invited, to provide an important link between basic science and practical applications emanating from it. The schedule will feature lectures in the morning and evening, with ample time in the afternoon for informal interactions between the participants to stimulate the creative exchange of ideas. Spectacular advances have been made in biosynthetic research since the last Seminar in 1994, and new directions are developing, especially in the translation of basic knowledge in the field of natural products biosynthesis into potential applications in the generation of new useful molecules or the commerical production of economically important compounds by bioprocesses. The emergence of experimental work in marine natural products biosynthesis and an increasing awareness of the ecological role of natural product biosythesis are other noteworthy developments. Many of these advances will be the subject of lectures and discussions at the 5th U.S.-Japan Binational Seminar, with its focus directed "Towards Engineering Biochemical Diversity". Diversity in natural product structure and function has, for many years, provided the wellspring of pharmaceutical discovery, a large fraction of the currently used clinical drugs being natural products or having been derived from natural products leads. A major objective of the meeting is to assess the current knowledge of biosynthetic pathways and the molecular origins of their diversity, and to explore how this knowledge can be utilized in applications of "combinatorial biochemistry" to the discovery and/or production of new pharmaceuticals. This is a subject of high interest to many institutes of the NIH, particularly the National Cancer Institute, which recently explored these issues in a special workshop.