Keystone Symposia: Molecular Basis for Chromatin Structure and Regulation (A8)

Chromatin structure and dynamics underlie every aspect of genome function. The past several years have seen an exponential growth in our knowledge of facts, ranging from catalogs of histone protein posttranslational modifications to complete genome sequences of many organisms to atomic resolution structures of many key molecular players. But our mechanistic understanding lags far behind. New reagents, methodologies and concepts are needed. This meeting will bring together leading experts in diverse areas of chromatin biology who are developing and applying new approaches to develop a concrete mechanistic link between chromatin structure and chromatin function. The topics covered include: fundamental in vivo physical chemical studies of transcription factor binding; real-time single molecule in vivo imaging; state-of-the-art methods for discovery, characterization, and manipulation of histone- and nucleosome-modifying enzymes and for the synthesis and characterization of their specifically-modified histone and nucleosome substrates; single molecule biophysics studies of molecular mechanisms; atomic resolution structural studies; and locus- and chromosome-wide phenomena such as heterochromatin formation and dosage compensation.