42^nd Annual Drosophila Research conference

 

               The 42^nd Annual Drosophila Research Conference was held on 21-25 March 2001 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington, DC.  The Program Chairs for 2001 were Mariana Wolfner (Cornell University) and Michael Goldberg (Cornell University).  The 2001 Organizing Committee was Charles Aquadro, David Deitcher, John Ewer, Michael Goldberg, John Lis, Ross MacIntyre, Mariana Wolfner of Cornell University.  The conference was sponsored by The Drosophila Board in association with the Genetics Society of America, 9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20814-3998.  Large numbers of platform talks and posters were presented and summarized in a 373 page Program and Abstracts Volume. 

Keynote Address

Gerald M. Rubin  (University of California, Berkeley, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute).  A Personal View of the Drosophila Genome Project – Past, Present, and Future.

Plenary Lectures

Andrea Brand  (Wellcome/CRC Institute).  Asymmetric segregation of cell fate determinants in the embryonic nervous system. 

Ilan Davis  (Edinburgh University).  The mechanism of mRNA localization in the embryo and oocyte.

Ian W. Duncan  (Washington University).  Control of distal antennal identity by spineless (ss), the Drosophila homolog of the mammalian dioxin receptor. 

Anne Ephrussi  (Establishment of Drosophila embryonic polarity by RNA localization and translational control. 

Kent Golic  (University of Utah).  Drosophila gene targeting.

Daniel L. Hartl  (Harvard University).  Creative deletions:  evolution’s chad.

R. Scott Hawley  (University of California, Davis).  Meiotic pairing and chromosome segregation in Drosophila oocytes.

Thomas C. Kaufman  (Indiana University).  Probing the arthropod Bauplan with Hox genes.

Barbara Wakimoto  (University of Washington).  What does daddy do?  Genetic analysis of sperm function and paternal effects in Drosophila. 

John T. Lis  (Cornell University).  Dissecting transcriptional regulatory mechanisms in vivo:  combining high-resolution analysis of promoter architecture and function with rapid disruption of transcription factors.

Mani Ramaswami  (University of Arizona).  Cellular mechanisms that generate and regulate neural activity.

Workshops

Ecdysone Workshop

               Moderators:  Claude V. Maina and George Tzertzinis (New England Biolabs)

Drosophila Research at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions

               Moderators:  Karen Hales (Davidson College), Janna McLean (Truman State University), Nancy Pokrywka (Vassar College), and Elaine Reynolds (Lafayette College)

Signalling Through Heterotrimeric G. Proteins

               Moderator:  Michael Forte (Oregon Health Sciences University)

Distribution, Structure, and Function of Cytonemes and Filopodia in Drosophila Tissue

               Moderators:  Thomas Kornberg (University of California, San Francisco) and Akira Chiba (University of Illinois, Urbana)

Techniques Workshop

               Moderator:  Ken Burtis (University of California, Davis)

Genetics of Non-Drosophilid Insects

               Moderators:  Mary Anne Pultz (Western Washington University) and John H. Werren (University of Rochester)

DNA Microarrays

               Moderator:  Alan M. Michelson (Harvard University)

Fate Choices and Asymmetric Cell Divisions

               Moderator:  Angela Giangrande (University of Strasbourg)

Hematopoiesis/Cellular Immunity

               Moderators:  Shubha Govind (Novartis Institute of Biomedical Research) and Marie Meister (CNRS, Strasbourg, France)

RNA Processing

               Moderator:  Helen Salz (Case Western Reserve University)