Conference: "RNA and Protein Folding and beyond: A vision for the next decade"; to be held September 15 and 16, 2011, in Arlington, VA.

该奖项是为了支持将于2011年9月12日至13日在弗吉尼亚州阿灵顿举行的为期两天的会议，题为“RNA和蛋白质折叠及以后：展望未来十年”。大约20名代表广泛专业知识和愿景的研究人员将聚集在一起，目的是评估蛋白质和RNA自组装中的突出问题，以及这些问题如何与更大规模的功能和组装相关。本次研讨会将召集大约20位演讲者，他们代表RNA和蛋白质折叠的所有领域，以及与这些实体组装成更大的复合体和更高阶有组织结构相关的领域。生物学中的一个巨大挑战是将个体亚基水平的知识和能力与描述它们如何相互作用以影响细胞水平的功能的能力相结合。本次研讨会将讨论RNA和蛋白质折叠的现状，以及涉及这些实体的组装和功能。会议的主要目的是确定在未来十年中必须在理论、模拟和实验中解决的主要问题，以便评估和预测蛋白质和RNA在细胞水平上协同或孤立地执行无数功能所起的作用。会议将涵盖蛋白质和RNA组装领域的主要未解决问题，确定共同主题，并为如何整合单个亚基的行为来描述系统层面的现象制定课程。这个研讨会是一个独特的方式，聚集了一些领先的科学家来讨论从未在传统会议上提出的话题。因此，这将是第一次将两个通常不相互沟通的社区聚集在一起的机会。其次，思想的交流对于确定新的研究领域至关重要，在我们为生物学下一阶段的定量研究开发语言和框架的同时，这些研究领域必须在不久的将来得到解决。广泛的具有物理、化学和生物学背景的科学家将聚集在一起，确定必须解决的问题，并确定所需的方法。

This award is in support of a two-day meeting entitled "RNA and Protein Folding and beyond: A vision for the next decade" to be held in Arlington, Virginia, on September 12 and 13, 2011. About twenty researchers representing a broad range of expertise and vision will be assembled with the purpose of assessing the outstanding problems in self-assembly of proteins and RNA, and how these are related to function and assembly at larger scales. This workshop will convene about 20 speakers that represent all areas of RNA and protein folding as well as areas related to the assembly of these entities into larger complexes and higher order organized structures. One of the great challenges in biology is to integrate knowledge and capabilities at the individual subunit level with the ability to describe how these interact to affect function at the cellular level. This workshop will address the current status of RNA and protein folding, and the assembly and functions involving such entities. The major aim of the meeting is to identify major issues that must be addressed in theory, simulations, and experiments in the next decade so that the roles which proteins and RNA play to carry out the myriad functions at the cellular level, in concert and in isolation, can be assessed and predicted. The meeting will cover the major unsolved problems in the area of protein and RNA assembly, identify common themes, and chart a course for how to integrate the behavior of individual subunits to describe phenomena at the systems level.This workshop is a unique way to assemble some of the leading scientists to discuss topics that are never brought up at traditional meetings. As such this will be the first opportunity to bring together two communities that do not normally communicate with each other. Second, the exchange of ideas will be crucial in identifying new areas of research, which have to be tackled in the immediate future as we develop a language and framework for the next phase of quantitative research in biology. A broad spectrum of scientists with backgrounds in physics, chemistry and biology will be brought together to define the issues that have to be tackled and to identify the approaches that are needed.