Workshop : Frontiers in Genomics: Insights into Protist Evolutionary Biology, to be held on May 19-21, 2004 in Iowa City, IA.

向爱荷华大学的Debashish Bhattacharya博士提供了一笔赠款，用于举办题为“基因组学前沿：对原生生物进化生物学的洞察”的讲习班，随后在原生动物学家学会年会上举办题为“微生物真核生物的基因组进化”的专题讨论会。史密斯学院的劳拉·卡茨博士是这些特别会议的联合组织者。讲习班的具体目的是确定基因组学在解决真核生物生命树最深处节点方面的作用，确定在确定原生生物基因组特征方面的挑战，并提出解决这些挑战的具体办法。讲习班的结论将通过同行评议的出版物和在线资源传播，这些出版物和在线资源将说明培训未来原生生物基因组学领域的科学家的适当机制。随后的专题讨论会将是一个公共论坛，将邀请原生生物基因组学领域的专家发表演讲，向社区提供关于新出现的数据的最新情况以及关于未来使用的适当基因组工具的信息。此外，还将举办海报展示环节，突出本科生和研究生以及博士后的工作。专题讨论会的会议记录将以编辑过的卷的形式出版，以便最广泛地分发。原生生物构成了真核生物多样性的主体，但原生生物基因组仍然相对未被探索。研究界现在正在走出基因组测序的模式生物阶段，比较基因组学的力量/重要性正在变得明显。然而，原生生物基因组的工作由于缺乏对原生生物学的了解而受到阻碍，反之亦然。研讨会和研讨会将通过汇集原生生物多样性、基因组数据收集和生物信息学方面的专业知识，从基因组角度推动原生生物基因组研究和原生生物进化生物学，在这两个小组之间架起一座桥梁。

A grant has been awarded to Dr. Debashish Bhattacharya at the University of Iowa to organize a workshop entitled, "Frontiers in Genomics: Insights into Protist Evolutionary Biology", followed by a symposium at the annual meeting of the Society of Protozoologists entitled, "Genome Evolution in Microbial Eukaryotes". Dr. Laura Katz at Smith College is co-organizer of these special meetings. The specific aims of the workshop are to define the role of genomics in resolving the deepest nodes in the eukaryotic tree of life, to identify challenges in characterizing protist genomes, and in proposing specific solutions to these challenges. The findings of the workshop will be disseminated through a peer-reviewed publication and online resources that will provide a description of appropriate mechanisms for training future scientists in the area of protist genomics. The ensuing symposium will be a public forum that will consist of invited lectures from experts in the field of protist genomics that will provide the community with an update on the emerging data as well as information on appropriate genomic tools to use in the future. In addition, there will be a poster session to highlight the work of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdocs. The proceedings of the symposium will be published as an edited volume to faciliate the broadest distribution. Protists constitute the bulk of eukaryotic diversity yet protist genomes remain relatively unexplored. The research community is now moving out of the model organism stage of genomic sequencing and the power/importance of comparative genomics is becoming apparent. Work on protist genomes is, however, hampered by a lack of understanding of protistology among genomicists and vice versa. The workshop and symposium will bridge these two groups by bringing together expertise in protist diversity, genomic data collection, and bioinformatics to spur protist genomic research and protist evolutionary biology from a genomic perspective.