Abstract

Translational Control has become a major focus of attention in the field of gene regulation and extends to many fields including developmental biology, neurobiology, cell physiology and disease. The discovery of miRNAs opened a new frontier and has been complimented with the finding of new non-coding RNA molecules and the establishment of novel powerful high-throughput techniques, both of which will be central within the conference. With the increasing appreciation for the integration between different steps in the gene expression pathway, the conference will also explore the latest work on the interfaces between translational control and mRNA turnover, RNA localization and splicing/nonsense-mediated decay. The conference will continue to promote communication between experts in the field of translation with those from a scientifically related field that have traditionally held separate meetings on the structure and function of the ribosome. Finally, our biochemical understanding of the translation process is progressing rapidly, and is uncovering hidden layers of regulation including isoforms of translation initiation factors with distinct activities and initiation at non-AUG codons. The latest findings regarding these processes will be featured prominently within the conference. We thus believe that the conference promises to be timely, cutting-edge and of broad interest.