Conference: 2024 Microbial Stress Response GRC and GRS: Dealing with the Unknown: Bacterial Stress Responses Across Time and Space

该奖项支持于7月14日至19日在马萨诸塞州芒特霍利奥克学院举行的2024年戈登研究研讨会和“微生物应激反应”会议。这次会议汇集了人口统计学上不同的200名国际科学家组成的小组，他们试图了解微生物如何感知和响应具有挑战性的和不断变化的环境。了解微生物对压力的反应对生物技术、生态学和环境生物学等领域具有广泛的影响，以及微生物与其感染的宿主建立的共生和发病关系。除了由经验丰富的研究人员和新进入该领域的受训人员进行正式演讲外，还通过海报演示来促进研究人员之间的一对一互动。NSF Support支付旅费，允许不同的参与者从他们职业生涯的早期阶段参加。因此，这次会议为下一代科学家提供了关键的培训机会。细菌和古生菌面临着几乎持续不断的各种应激源的攻击，包括营养限制、温度变化、抗生素、噬菌体、宿主免疫系统等。他们能否正确地发现和应对这种压力，在很大程度上决定了他们在激烈竞争的世界中的生存。微生物已经进化出微调和复杂的调节机制，通过控制基因组复制和修复、基因表达、蛋白稳定、RNA处理以及中央和次生代谢来响应压力。总体而言，这些应对措施使它们能够在一系列恶劣条件下生存。因此，描绘微生物对压力的反应将阐明从细菌到人类保守的关键细胞过程的基本原理。会议通过正式演讲和讨论，将经验丰富的研究人员与职业生涯早期的科学家聚集在一起，鼓励就一些领域进行非正式分享，例如了解微生物与环境之间相互作用的新方法，特别是在压力和竞争条件下分析细菌生理学和群落结构的现代成像、遗传学、元基因组和计算策略。该奖项反映了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。

This award supports the 2024 Gordon Research Seminar and Conference on “Microbial Stress Response,” held July 14-19th at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. This meeting brings together a demographically diverse group of 200 international scientists seeking to understand how microbes sense and respond to challenging and ever-changing environments. Understanding how microbes respond to stress has wide-reaching impacts on areas such as biotechnology, ecology, and environmental biology, as well as the symbiosis and pathogenesis relationships that microbes establish with the hosts they infect. In addition to formal talks presented by experienced researchers and trainees new to the field, engagement is facilitated by poster presentations to stimulate one-on-one interactions between researchers. NSF support defrays travel costs to allow attendance of diverse participants from early stages of their careers. This meeting therefore provides critical training opportunities for the next generation of scientists.Bacteria and Archaea face a nearly constant onslaught of diverse stressors, including nutrient limitations, temperature changes, antibiotics, phage, host immune systems, and more. Whether they can properly detect and respond to such stressors largely determines their survival in a world of fierce competition. Microbes have evolved finely tuned and sophisticated regulatory mechanisms for responding to stress by controlling genome duplication and repair, gene expression, proteostasis, RNA processing, and both central and secondary metabolism. Collectively, these responses enable survival in a range of harsh conditions. Thus, delineating how microbes respond to stress will elucidate the fundamental principles governing key cellular processes that are conserved from bacteria to humans. The meeting brings together seasoned investigators with early-career scientists through both formal talks and discussion sessions to encourage informal sharing on areas such as new approaches to understanding interactions between microbes and the environment, particularly modern imaging, genetic, metagenomic, and computational strategies for the analysis of bacterial physiology and community structures under conditions of stress and competition.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.