Frontiers in Macromolecular Simulations Symposium

描述(由申请人提供)：21世纪的生物医学研究是由对解决人类最持久和最困难的医学问题的新药和程序的需求推动的。这项研究在很大程度上依赖于计算机密集的基于结构的方法来理解生物大分子和超分子组装的原子细节。进展正在以令人眼花缭乱的速度加速，迫切需要推动由计算结构生物学家推动的综合方法。为了帮助应对这一挑战，我们的目标是为拓宽资深科学家的思维提供一个环境，更重要的是，创造新一代以理论为导向的综合性科学家，研究蛋白质、膜、脂蛋白、RNA和核糖体的结构和动力学。在这项双重PI拨款申请中，Jere Segrest(UAB)和Steve Harvey(佐治亚理工学院)正在为2009年秋季第六次举行的名为“高分子模拟前沿”的年度研讨会寻求3年的支持。在过去的四年里，这个研讨会的地点在阿拉巴马州伯明翰的UAB和佐治亚州亚特兰大的佐治亚理工学院之间交替举行。我们的双重PI资助申请的目标是举办一系列三个年度会议，致力于膜、脂蛋白、蛋白质、RNA和核糖体的结构和动力学的快速研究。在拟议的研讨会上的演讲将集中在理论驱动的基于物理的分子建模、模拟和实验上。生物学研究越来越多地涉及多学科，许多实验小组现在经常在他们的工作中使用复杂的计算工具。我们的目标是提供一个场所，让面向应用的计算结构生物学家接触到最新的方法学进步(并就建议的改进提供反馈)，在这个场所中，实验者将有机会激发计算生物学家的思维，包括那些主要对应用程序感兴趣的人，以及那些主要对算法的开发感兴趣的人。我们计划于2011年3月30日至4月1日在阿拉巴马州克利尔点万豪大酒店举行为期三天的三个年度会议中的第一个。大约三分之二的讲台演讲者席位将留给膜、脂蛋白和蛋白质，三分之一留给RNA和核糖体。两位主讲嘉宾，加州理工学院化学教授Harry Gray和约翰霍普金斯大学医学院分子生物学及遗传学教授Rachel Green，已同意加入两位主讲人士的行列，成为第一届会议的筹委会成员。除主旨演讲人外，还有9名讲台演讲人、4名妇女和1名少数族裔人士承诺参加2011年专题讨论会。计划举行的三次系列会议中的第二次会议将于2012年春季在佐治亚州的佐治亚理工大学校区外举行，地点尚未确定。该系列的最后一次会议将于2013年春季在第三个州的一个中立地点举行，不一定是在东南部。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): 21st century biomedical research is being driven by the need for new drugs and procedures for solving humankind's most persistent and difficult medical problems. This research critically depends upon computer- intensive structure-based approaches to understand biological macromolecules and supramolecular assemblies in atomic detail. Progress is accelerating at a dizzying rate, and there is a critical need to promote integrative approaches driven by computational structural biologists. To help meet this challenge, our goal is to provide an environment for broadening the thinking of senior scientists, and, more important, to create a new diverse generation of theory-driven integrative scientists studying the structure and dynamics of proteins, membranes, lipoproteins, RNA and ribosomes. In this dual PI grant application, Jere Segrest (UAB) and Steve Harvey (Georgia Tech) are seeking 3 years support for an ongoing annual symposium entitled, "Frontiers in Macromolecular Simulations" that was held for the 6th time in the fall of 2009. For the past four years, the site of this symposium has alternated between UAB in Birmingham, AL and Georgia Tech in Atlanta, GA. The objective of our dual PI grant application is to hold a series of three annual conferences dedicated to fast breaking research in structure and dynamics of membranes, lipoproteins, proteins, RNA and ribosomes. Presentations at the proposed symposia will focus on theory-driven physics-based molecular modeling, simulations and experimentation. Biological research is increasingly multidisciplinary, and many experimental groups now routinely use sophisticated computational tools in their work. Our aim is to provide a venue in which application-oriented computational structural biologists will be exposed to the latest methodological advances (and provide feedback on suggested improvements), and in which experimentalists will have the opportunity to stimulate the thinking of computational biologists, both those who are primarily interested in applications, and those whose primary interest is the development of algorithms. We propose to hold the first of the three planned annual conferences for three days in March 30-April 1, 2011 at the Grand Hotel Marriott, Point Clear, Alabama. Approximately two-thirds of the platform speaker's slots will be reserved for membranes, lipoproteins and proteins and one-third for RNA and ribosomes. The two keynote speakers, Harry Gray, Professor of Chemistry, California Institute of Technology and Rachel Green, Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, have agreed to join the two PIs in the organizing committee for the first conference. In addition to the keynote speakers, nine platform speakers, four women and one minority, have committed for the 2011 symposium. The second in the planned series of three conferences will be held off the Georgia Tech campus in the spring of 2012 at a still to be determined site in the State of Georgia. The final conference in the series will be held in the spring of 2013 at a neutral to be determined site in a third state, not necessarily in the Southeast.