Workshop: Integrative organismal biology of adaptive processes, September 19-20, 2011, Arlington, VA

生物学的许多分支学科已经达到了这样一种状态，即需要整合和巩固现有的方法、术语和知识，以及更有效和更广泛地利用现代技术，以便从根本上对有机生物学原理有新的认识。本次研讨会的目标是探索和设计未来的策略，以揭示和解释决定生物与其环境之间相互作用的基本原理，并弥合生物生物学不同分支学科之间的差距。为了实现这一目标，研讨会将汇集通常不经常互动但代表传统上不同的生物学分支学科的科学家。本次研讨会的共同点是，所有这些科学家都是生物生物学一个或多个方面的领导者，重点是研究生物如何与环境相互作用。从这样一个多样化的科学家群体中获得广阔的视角和投入，对于评估生物-环境相互作用科学的现状，以及就最有效地推动该领域向前发展的工具和机制展开创造性和开创性的对话至关重要。讲习班参与者将确定新出现的主题和取得进展的机会，这对解决有关生物与环境相互作用原则的基本问题至关重要。讲习班将确定各种途径，以促进研究大量物种对环境的反应的广泛调查人员之间的有效互动。这些相互作用的目标是发展协调良好的以社区为基础的科学研究和培训工作，从而在了解生物体生物学方面取得突破。一种全新的、更连贯的、完整的有机生物学观点，结合了现代系统生物学的关键概念，可能会改变从K12到研究生教育的各个层次的生物学教学方式。这将通过提供一个知识和方法的框架来实现，这个框架可以作为粘合剂，将现代生物学研究阐明的看似不同的细节和事实联系在一起，形成一个共同的整体，使学生能够从直观的角度联系起来。

Many sub-disciplines of biology have reached a state that calls for integration and consolidation of existing approaches, terminology, and knowledge as well as more efficient and wide-spread utilization of modern technologies to enable fundamentally new insight into principles of organismal biology. The goal of this workshop is to explore and devise future strategies for revealing and explaining fundamental principles that determine interactions between organisms and their environment and to bridge the gap between divergent sub-disciplines of organismal biology. To achieve this goal the workshop will bring together scientists who normally do not interact routinely but represent traditionally divergent sub-disciplines of biology. The common denominator of this workshop will be that all of those scientists are leaders in one or more aspects of organismal biology with emphasis on the study of how organisms interact with the environment. Gaining a broad perspective and input from such a diverse group of scientists is critical for assessing the current state of the science of organism-environment interactions and for launching a creative and ground-breaking dialogue about the tools and mechanisms that would be most efficient to move the field forward. Workshop participants will identify emerging themes and opportunities for progress vital to addressing fundamental questions pertaining to principles of organism interactions with the environment. The workshop will identify avenues that will facilitate productive interactions among a broad array of investigators studying responses of a large number of species to the environment. The goal of those interactions is the development of well-coordinated community-based scientific research and training efforts that will lead to breakthroughs in understanding the biology of organisms. A fresh and more coherent, well-integrated outlook on organismal biology, which incorporates key concepts of modern systems biology, will likely change the way biology is taught at all levels ranging from K12 to graduate education. This would be achieved by providing a framework of knowledge and approaches that can serve as the glue for tying together seemingly disparate details and facts elucidated by modern biological research into a common whole that students can relate to from an intuitive perspective.