Frontiers in Macromolecular Simulations Symposium

描述（由申请人提供）：21世纪的生物医学研究是由解决人类最持久和最困难的医学问题的新药物和新程序的需求推动的。这项研究主要依赖于计算机密集的基于结构的方法来理解生物大分子和超分子组装的原子细节。进步正在以令人眼花缭乱的速度加速，并且迫切需要促进由计算结构生物学家驱动的综合方法。为了迎接这一挑战，我们的目标是为拓宽资深科学家的思维提供一个环境，更重要的是，创造新一代理论驱动的综合科学家，研究蛋白质、膜、脂蛋白、RNA和核糖体的结构和动力学。Jere Segrest （UAB）和Steve Harvey （Georgia Tech）正在为一个正在进行的年度研讨会寻求3年的资助，该研讨会名为“大分子模拟的前沿”，已于2009年秋季举行了第六次。在过去的四年里，这个研讨会的地点在阿拉巴马州伯明翰的UAB和乔治亚州亚特兰大的佐治亚理工学院之间交替举行。我们的双PI拨款申请的目的是举办一系列三次年度会议，致力于膜，脂蛋白，蛋白质，RNA和核糖体的结构和动力学方面的快速突破研究。在提议的研讨会上的演讲将集中在理论驱动的基于物理的分子建模、模拟和实验上。生物学研究越来越多地涉及多学科，许多实验小组现在在他们的工作中经常使用复杂的计算工具。我们的目标是提供一个场所，使面向应用的计算结构生物学家能够接触到最新的方法进展（并对建议的改进提供反馈），实验学家将有机会激发计算生物学家的思维，包括那些主要对应用感兴趣的人，以及那些主要对算法开发感兴趣的人。我们建议于2011年3月30日至4月1日在阿拉巴马州波因特克莱的万豪大酒店举行三次计划年度会议中的第一次，为期三天。大约三分之二的平台演讲者将用于膜、脂蛋白和蛋白质，三分之一用于RNA和核糖体。两位主讲人是加州理工学院化学教授Harry Gray和约翰霍普金斯大学医学院分子生物学和遗传学教授Rachel Green，他们已经同意与两位pi一起参加第一次会议的组织委员会。除了主题发言人外，还有9名平台发言人，4名女性和1名少数族裔，已承诺参加2011年的研讨会。计划中的三场系列会议中的第二场将于2012年春天在乔治亚理工学院校园外举行，地点尚待确定。该系列的最后一次会议将于2013年春季在第三个州的一个中立地点举行，地点尚未确定，不一定在东南部。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): 21st century biomedical research is being driven by the need for new drugs and procedures for solving humankind's most persistent and difficult medical problems. This research critically depends upon computer- intensive structure-based approaches to understand biological macromolecules and supramolecular assemblies in atomic detail. Progress is accelerating at a dizzying rate, and there is a critical need to promote integrative approaches driven by computational structural biologists. To help meet this challenge, our goal is to provide an environment for broadening the thinking of senior scientists, and, more important, to create a new diverse generation of theory-driven integrative scientists studying the structure and dynamics of proteins, membranes, lipoproteins, RNA and ribosomes. In this dual PI grant application, Jere Segrest (UAB) and Steve Harvey (Georgia Tech) are seeking 3 years support for an ongoing annual symposium entitled, "Frontiers in Macromolecular Simulations" that was held for the 6th time in the fall of 2009. For the past four years, the site of this symposium has alternated between UAB in Birmingham, AL and Georgia Tech in Atlanta, GA. The objective of our dual PI grant application is to hold a series of three annual conferences dedicated to fast breaking research in structure and dynamics of membranes, lipoproteins, proteins, RNA and ribosomes. Presentations at the proposed symposia will focus on theory-driven physics-based molecular modeling, simulations and experimentation. Biological research is increasingly multidisciplinary, and many experimental groups now routinely use sophisticated computational tools in their work. Our aim is to provide a venue in which application-oriented computational structural biologists will be exposed to the latest methodological advances (and provide feedback on suggested improvements), and in which experimentalists will have the opportunity to stimulate the thinking of computational biologists, both those who are primarily interested in applications, and those whose primary interest is the development of algorithms. We propose to hold the first of the three planned annual conferences for three days in March 30-April 1, 2011 at the Grand Hotel Marriott, Point Clear, Alabama. Approximately two-thirds of the platform speaker's slots will be reserved for membranes, lipoproteins and proteins and one-third for RNA and ribosomes. The two keynote speakers, Harry Gray, Professor of Chemistry, California Institute of Technology and Rachel Green, Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, have agreed to join the two PIs in the organizing committee for the first conference. In addition to the keynote speakers, nine platform speakers, four women and one minority, have committed for the 2011 symposium. The second in the planned series of three conferences will be held off the Georgia Tech campus in the spring of 2012 at a still to be determined site in the State of Georgia. The final conference in the series will be held in the spring of 2013 at a neutral to be determined site in a third state, not necessarily in the Southeast.