NAIST Global COE International Symposium 2008 Cell Signaling
The 3rd Global COE International Symposium, on "Cell Signaling," was held on November 13-14, 2008 in Millennium Hall, NAIST. The aim of the Symposium was to foster international and regional research co-operation, particularly between the tripartite working group of CAS-IGDB (China), UCD-CBS (USA), and NAIST-BS (Japan). For these purposes, eleven eminent international scientists, including four from overseas and two from NAIST, were invited to give presentations on their current research.
The theme of the Symposium concerned various biological phenomena that are based on cell signaling: cell movement and adhesion, planar polarity, molecular transport within the cell, intracellular signal transduction, apoptosis, self-incompatibility in plants, pollen tube attraction, and genome-wide analysis of protein phosphorylation. Approximately 380 participants attended the Symposium, including students from the preceding GCOE International Student Workshop who presented their work in a poster session.
GCOE program leader Professor Ko Shimamoto opened the Symposium, beginning a two-day meeting filled with presentations of interesting new findings, each followed by questions from the audience that often stretched the timetable. A buffet dinner was held at the end of the first day, which encouraged lively interactions among the participants. In her closing remarks, Professor Carol Erickson (UCD-CBS) reviewed the international activities that have taken place between CAS-IGDB, UCD-CBS, and NAIST under the GCOE program - including this Symposium and the International Student Workshop - and encouraged further interaction and co-operation in the future.
