In Basic Biology, Cancer, Infectious Disease and Medicine

The goal of this meeting is to bring current understanding of biological mechanisms, including molecular mechanisms of genome plasticity, mutagenesis, protein- and RNA-based inheritance, epigenetics, stress, stress responses, stochasticity, and phenotypic variation and plasticity (among others), to bear on understanding of evolution, and the many medical and basic-science problems driven by evolution. We hope to unite what have been disparate fields: evolutionary biology and mechanistic molecular genetics, genomics and molecular biology, focusing on the contributions of the latter to our understanding of evolution. The "modern synthesis" of the early twentieth century, which gave birth to current evolutionary biology, predated the molecular biology revolution. Traditional evolutionary biology has not always kept pace with changes to the basic assumptions of genetic inheritance and discoveries of non-genetic inheritance that have come from studies on molecular mechanisms. Similarly, molecular biology has often ignored the critical roles of evolution in important medical and basic-biological problems. This meeting is aimed at the growing body of investigators attempting to bring molecular biological mechanisms to bear on understanding of evolution. The goals are to catalyze integrated, mechanistic views of mechanisms of evolution operating today and their consequences in medicine and basic biology. Although molecular biology is only recently beginning to penetrate the arena of evolutionary biology, integration of these disciplines is crucial for deeper understanding of evolution and biology in general. This meeting will give a home and community to researchers doing this.