Conference: 2023 Plant Proteolysis Gordon Research Conference

Proteolysis, the breakdown of proteins or peptides to amino acids, is critical for removal of unwanted or damaged proteins and regulation of cellular processes such as metabolism. This Gordon Research Conference (GRC) will bring together the rapidly growing international community of researchers focused on plant proteolysis including a highly diverse group of graduate students, postdoctoral scientists and new investigators. The interactive, informal environment will lead to development of new contacts and collaborations. The anticipated long-term impact of this conference is therefore to accelerate plant proteolysis research across disciplines and its impact of agriculture and biotechnology, and catalyze collaboration between researchers in the public and private sectors. Proteases recognize their substrates in various ways, including post-translational modifications and conditional degrons that allow the cell to rapidly reshape the proteome and acclimate to adverse conditions. This new Gordon Research Conference (GRC) will bring together researchers studying all aspects of plant proteolysis and covering a wide range of disciplines, including cell and molecular biology, chemistry and biochemistry, imaging, physics and systems biology, to generate new research avenues and provide solutions to some of society’s challenges. Added value will be provided by invited researchers from non-plant fields to accelerate tool development and application, and to understand evolutionary diversification of proteolytic systems. The new GRC meeting will help grow the community of scientists in dispersed communities that share common goals in unraveling the role of proteolysis in plant biology. NSF support for this GRC will attract and broaden participation of early career scientists, including URMs into this emerging field, and thereby strengthening and accelerating future discoveries in Plant Proteolysis. 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.