Workshop: Complex Behavior in Unicellular Organisms

描述（由申请人提供）：该提案要求为研讨会“生物复杂性VI：单细胞生物的复杂行为”提供部分资金，该研讨会由印第安纳州大学生物复杂性研究所和圣母大学生物复杂性中心联合组织。该讲习班的目的是比其他讲习班范围更广，更具跨学科性，同时继续侧重于一个明确界定的问题。它将汇集许多学科的研究人员（包括实验和理论生物学，生物物理学，工程学，数学和计算机科学），讨论当前和未来的问题，集体现象在单细胞生物，包括原核和真核生物行为，运动和出租性，多细胞聚集和生物膜，分布行为和细胞间信号的比较，分化和发育以及致病和共生相互作用。讲座将涵盖从单分子相互作用和遗传学到系统生物学和生态学的长度尺度。研讨会的一个具体目标是将实验学家、建模师、工程师和基础研究人员聚集在一起，并包括通常不会参加同一会议的人。这种交叉施肥应该提高我们对集体行为的基本生物学的理解，导致更有用的模型和工程技术，启动新的建模工作，促进实验者和建模者之间的合作，在子学科之间转移最佳实践，并鼓励更全面的方法来解决问题。我们已经有来自美国，加拿大，欧洲，以色列和日本的40多位发言人，预计总参与人数约为100人，包括大量的博士后研究员和研究生。 讲习班将包括一个重要的教育部分，针对研究生和初级科学家，特别是那些目前没有参与单细胞生物体复杂现象，但有兴趣了解开放的问题，方法和机会。作为我们推广工作的一部分，我们将为非科学家和感兴趣的社区成员举办一次大型公开讲座，由以色列魏茨曼研究所的Eshel Ben-Jacob博士主讲。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal requests partial funding for the workshop "Biocomplexity VI: Complex Behavior in Unicellular Organisms," jointly organized by the Biocomplexity Institute at Indiana University and the Biocomplexity Center at the University of Notre Dame. The workshop aims to be broader in scope and more interdisciplinary than other workshops, while remaining focused on a clearly defined problem. It will bring together researchers in many disciplines (including experimental and theoretical biology, biophysics, engineering, mathematics and computer science) to discuss current and future problems in collective phenomena in single-celled organisms, including comparison between prokaryotic and eukaryotic behaviors, motility and taxis, multicellular aggregation and biofilms, distributed behavior and intercellular signaling, differentiation and development and pathenogenic and symbiotic interactions. The talks will cover length scales from single molecule interactions and genetics to systems biology and ecology. A specific goal of the workshop is to bring experimentalists and modelers and engineers and basic researchers together and to include people who would not normally attend the same conference. This cross fertilization should improve our understanding of the fundamental biology of collective behaviors, lead to more useful models and engineering techniques, initiate new modeling efforts, promote collaborations between experimentalists and modelers, transfer best practice between subdisciplines and encourage more holistic approaches to problem solving. We have already more than forty confirmed speakers from the USA, Canada, Europe, Israel and Japan and anticipate a total participation of about 100 including a substantial number of postdoctoral fellows and graduate students. The workshop will include a significant educational component directed at graduate students and junior scientists, especially those not currently involved in complex phenomena in single celled organisms, but interested in learning about open problems, methodologies and opportunities. As part of our outreach effort we will sponsor a large public lecture for nonscientists and interested members of the community at large to be given by Dr. Eshel Ben-Jacob of the Weizmann Institute, Israel.