Light sensing provides cues regarding the habitat, time of the day and the season that are of vital importance to many living organisms. The 2012 Gordon Research Conference on Photosensory Receptors and Signal Transduction, held January 22-27 at Hotel Galvez, Galveston (TX) will provide a forum for discussions of the biological, chemical and physical aspects of the diverse group of photoreceptors enabling most living organisms to sense, respond and adapt to changes in their light environment. In addition to addressing fundamental questions in sensory biology, the field of photobiology has triggered the development of optogenetics. The latest developments of this technology enabling the control of biological responses with unprecedented temporal and spatial control will also be covered.

Speakers will compare and contrast sensing mechanisms and responses elicited by light in organisms as diverse as animals, plants, fungi and various prokaryotes. These organisms encode numerous distinct light sensing domains, found in combination with a variety of output domains that lead to a wide range of light-induced signaling events. These photosensory mechanisms will be discussed at different levels of resolution ranging from atomic structures of the photoreceptors to the physiological responses controlled by light.

By offering presentations from the leading scientists world-wide from different subfields, we seek a better understanding of several key questions. How can light-induced changes in chromophores trigger allosteric changes to the surrounding proteins? How are these changes in the light sensors transmitted to downstream effectors? How is light sensing integrated with other external or endogenous parameters to match the needs of the biological system? These questions are of central interest to human physiology as well as to bacterial, plant and animal biology in general. Moreover, this basic knowledge allows the development of novel fluorescent markers and tools for optogenetics. This Conference program will be complemented by the addition of a Gordon Research Seminar immediately preceding this meeting, thus providing additional opportunities for postdocs and graduate students to present their research in talks and posters, and encouraging them to attend the immediately following Conference.