6th ASM Conference on Cell-Cell Communication in Bacteria

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PROJECT SUMARY Bacteria by definition are single-celled organisms, but they, like other forms of life, have evolved surprising complex methods to coordinated behaviors. Research over the past 25 years has revealed that a wide range of bacteria can communicate by diverse mechanisms. In most cases these microbial conversations occur through the exchange of diffusible signals, although there are also clear examples of contact-dependent communication. Many microbes use these signaling mechanisms to monitor and respond to population density, a process often described as quorum sensing. Much of this research has focused on single species communication, but a growing reseach area is the more complex behavior of communication between multiple species of bacteria or bacteria and other eukaryotic organisms. Interbacterial communication is not however restricted to quorum sensing mechanisms and there is mounting evidence that signaling can function in a range of different capacities. This communication has profound impacts on our understanding of how pathogens and commensals often regulate factors critical for interaction with each other and their hosts. This application requests financial support for the sixth American Society for Microbiology-sponsored conference on Cell-cell Communication in Bacteria, to be held from October 16 – 19, 2017, in Athens, GA. There are two main goals of the CCCB conference. The first is to have the meeting serve as a platform to promote and attract young and ethnically diverse investigators involved in bacterial communication research. Young and diverse researchers will be chosen to be speakers at this conference, and a mentoring lunch will provide students with the opportunity to explore the diversity of career options in the bacterial communication field. The second goal of this conference is to foster interactions between reseachers with diverse expertise. Thus, small groups of researchers will be created that are seated together during lunch, with each member of the group coming from from a different research area: structural biology, computational biology, synthetic biology, chemistry, bacterial molecular genetics, microbial ecology, and microbial pathogenesis. In these small groups scientists will discuss their most pressing research challenges in bacterial communication with the goal of creating new solutions, research ideas, and even future collaborations.