Conference: 2025 Archaea: Ecology, Metabolism and Molecular Biology GRC and GRS: Archaeal Genomics for Understanding Origin of Eukaryotes and for Biotechnology Applications

This award will support the 2025 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) and Seminar (GRS) on “Archaea: Ecology, Metabolism and Molecular Biology,” to be held July 20-25, 2025 at Les Diablerets Conference Center, Switzerland. This meeting will be attended by graduate students, postdocs, and junior and senior faculty researchers from broad-ranging disciplines to discuss and advance our understanding of all aspects of the ecology, metabolism, and molecular biology of the Archaea, the oldest form of life on earth, ancestral to all other lifeforms.

The conference will also discuss advances in archaeal genomics for understanding the origins of animal, plant, and fungal cells, as well as for biotechnology applications. The interactions of microbiologists, geneticists, biochemists, and cell biologists will increase our understanding of these microorganisms and how to harness their potential for future biotechnology tools, and the senior scientists will engage with and train junior scientists.

This engagement is a priority of the conference and especially the seminar, in talks and poster sessions to allow all participants to display and discuss their research.

This meeting will be attended by graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and senior researchers to discuss our understanding of all aspects of archaeal taxonomy, genetics, and biochemistry. Sessions will focus on recent advances in such topics as “Viruses, CRISPRs, and Other Defense and Anti-defense Systems”, “Cellular Biology, Diversity and Evolution of Asgard Archaea”, “Ecology and Diversity of Archaea and the Human Archaeome,” and “Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology.” In addition to formal talks, engagement will be facilitated by poster sessions to stimulate interactions between researchers.

NSF support will be used to defray travel costs to allow attendance of participants from early stages of their careers.

This award is funded by the Cellular Dynamics and Function Cluster, the Genetic Mechanisms Cluster, the Systems and Synthetic Biology Clusters, and Division Office of the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences in the Directorate for Biological Sciences.

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.