Friday, January 13, 2012

SMBE 2012 early registration deadline and symposium on orthology

 For those who don't know, the deadline for abstract to the next Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution meeting (Dublin 23-26 June) is approaching. I am co-organizing a workshop on orthology/paralogy and function in collaboration with Marc Robinson-Rechavi, Matthew Hahn, and Iddo Friedberg. Find below an invitation to submit to SMBE2012 and more info on this workshop.

 Hope we can meet in Dublin. 




Dear colleague,

We invite you to submit an abstract to the symposium "The complex relationship between orthology, paralogy, and function" to take place at the meeting of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution in Dublin (23rd-26th June, 2012).

The deadline to submit an abstract is the 27th of January 2012, for more details please visit:

http://www.smbe2012.org/scientific-content/call-for-abstracts.html


Symposium "The complex relationship between orthology, paralogy, and function"

Orthology and paralogy have been central concepts in molecular evolution since the distinction was first proposed by Fitch in 1970. A long standing interpretation of this distinction has been that orthologs would be more similar in function than paralogs. Until recently, this interpretation was rarely tested, and in fact rarely explicitly articulated in a testable manner. Yet it has been widely used, from undergraduate teaching, to the practical application of orthology searches for genome annotation. There has been a recent increase of research, seeking to define and test this "ortholog conjecture". Notably, a recent paper (Nehrt et al. 2011, PloS Comput. Biol.) has reported a higher functional similarity of paralogs than of orthologs. This paper has generated much attention and debate, while at the same time recent work on orthologs has shown the vitality and importance of this field to a broad range of applications and questions. Our symposium will feature speakers addressing the fundamental relationships between molecular evolution and biological function, focusing especially on the role of orthology and paralogy in modulating such relationships.

Confirmed speakers: Eugene V. Koonin, Jianzhi Zhang

If you have any question regarding this symposium please do not hesitate to contact us:

Toni Gabaldon , Matthew Hahn , Iddo Friedberg, Marc Robinson-Rechavi

No comments:

Post a Comment