Antimicrobial Peptides in Innate Immunity - New Insights on an Ancient System

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are host-defense molecules produced by all living organisms, including bacteria, fungi, plants, invertebrates, vertebrates as well as humans. These molecules represent effectors of the metazoan innate immune system as well as defense molecules of microbes. In multicellular organisms they act at the front line of the defense system against pathogens where they are synthesized constitutively or inducibly at epithelial surfaces, the location where the initial contact with all microbes, from symbionts to pathogens, takes place. There is now evidence that these peptides represent key components at epithelial surfaces, the barrier between the external environment and the interior milieu, where they play an important role in defining the composition of microbiota and its interaction with the host.

Although many AMPs are cationic and have affinity to the negatively charged bacterial membrane that they disrupt, resulting in bacterial killing by lysis, there is upcoming evidence that AMPs can also kill microbes in a more sophisticated fashion. In addition to its microbicidal activity, several AMPs function also as chemoattractants for cells of both the adaptive and innate immunity and are able to modulate immune responses. Thus, AMPs constitute a link between the innate and adaptive immunity.

The 2011 Gordon Conference on Antimicrobial Peptides will present the latest research on the biology and activities of AMPs with emphasis on its role in health and disease. The Conference will feature a wide range of topics, such as structure/function analysis, regulation of expression, mechanisms of action, microbial avoidance strategies, human disease associations, model systems and its possible use as therapeutics. The connection of microbial and host-derived AMPs to the natural microflora and probiotics is a recent finding that will be emphasized as well as novel AMPs of different origin.

Invited speakers represent a diverse variety of scientific disciplines, including biochemistry, microbiology, molecular genetics, animal and plant biology, structural biology, biophysics, medicine, and innate immunity in general. The Conference will bring together a collection of investigators who are at the forefront of their field, and will provide opportunities for junior scientists and graduate students to present their work in poster format and exchange ideas with leaders in the field. Some abstracts and poster presenters will be selected for short talks. The collegial atmosphere of this Conference, with programmed discussion sessions as well as opportunities for informal gatherings in the afternoons and evenings, provides an avenue for scientists from different disciplines to brainstorm and promotes cross-disciplinary collaborations in the various research areas represented.