Conference: Symposium on the Immune System of Bacteria

2024年细菌免疫系统研讨会将是美国第一次将致力于最著名的CRISPR-CAS系统以外的无数抗病毒免疫系统的学者聚集在一起的会议。将有19位特邀演讲者和15位职业生涯早期演讲者组成的多元化队伍。会议的具体举措包括专门针对社区包容性问题的数据介绍和现场调查会议，以及建立导师-学员对，以加强对资深科学家的培训和接触。细菌不断地受到病毒(噬菌体)的攻击，并开发了分子系统来保护自己免受病毒感染。其中一些系统的工作原理是杀死病毒，而另一些系统则在感染完成之前杀死细菌本身，因此病毒后代不会形成，感染得到控制。已知的此类系统有100多个，其中大多数是在过去5-10年内发现的。其中一个系统CRISPR-Cas因其生物学价值和重要的生物医学/生物工程应用而广为人知。然而，这次会议将聚焦于其他研究较少的系统。会议的一个重点将是为早期职业科学家提供演讲论坛和指导机会。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The 2024 Symposium on the Immune System of Bacteria will be the first US meeting to gather the community of scholars working on the myriad of anti-virus immunity systems beyond the best-known CRISPR-Cas systems. There will be a diverse cohort of 19 invited speakers and 15 early-career speakers. Specific initiatives of the meeting include a data presentation and live survey session dedicated to addressing inclusivity in the community, and creation of mentor-mentee pairs to enhance training and accessibility of senior scientists. Bacteria are constantly attacked by viruses (bacteriophages), and have developed molecular systems to protect themselves from virus infection. Some of these systems work by killing the virus, while others kill the bacterium itself before the infection is complete, so that the virus progeny is not formed and the infection is contained. There are more than 100 such systems that are known, the majority of them discovered in the last 5-10 years. One such system, CRISPR-Cas, became widely known because of its biological interest and important biomedical/bioengineering applications. This conference, however, will focus on other, less studied systems. One focus of the conference will be on providing the presentation tribune and mentoring opportunities to the early-career scientists.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.