Conference: Symposium on the Immune System of Bacteria

The 2024 Symposium on the Immune System of Bacteria will be the first US meeting to gather the community of scholars working on the myriad of anti-virus immunity systems beyond the best-known CRISPR-Cas systems. There will be a diverse cohort of 19 invited speakers and 15 early-career speakers. Specific initiatives of the meeting include a data presentation and live survey session dedicated to addressing inclusivity in the community, and creation of mentor-mentee pairs to enhance training and accessibility of senior scientists. Bacteria are constantly attacked by viruses (bacteriophages), and have developed molecular systems to protect themselves from virus infection. Some of these systems work by killing the virus, while others kill the bacterium itself before the infection is complete, so that the virus progeny is not formed and the infection is contained. There are more than 100 such systems that are known, the majority of them discovered in the last 5-10 years. One such system, CRISPR-Cas, became widely known because of its biological interest and important biomedical/bioengineering applications. This conference, however, will focus on other, less studied systems. One focus of the conference will be on providing the presentation tribune and mentoring opportunities to the early-career scientists. 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.