Molecules Come to Life
2015-2017
Sponsors
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
Research Corporation for Science Advancement
Additional Support
Simons Foundation
National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute
Theme
The focus of this Scialog was for early-career theorists and experimentalists from physics, biology, and closely related disciplines to come together to develop a stronger quantitative connection between molecular phenomena and phenomena at the cellular systems level by pursuing collaborative, high risk, highly impactful discovery research on untested ideas in physical cell biology.
With guidance from distinguished senior scientists serving as facilitators, some of the questions Scialog Fellows discussed were:
- What are the fundamental principles that make a collection of molecules within a cell produce behaviors that we associate with life?
- How do molecules combine and dynamically interact to form functional units in cells?
- How do metabolism and signaling lead to cellular homeostasis?
- Can non-equilibrium thermodynamics provide a deeper understanding of cellular processes?
- How do cells make decisions about which genes to express?
On the final day of each conference, participants formed multidisciplinary teams to write collaborative proposals to pursue ideas sparked by their discussions. Seed funding in the form of Team Awards enabled grantees to pursue the most promising of these ideas.
Successes
Follow-on funding for MCL projects:
- Ozkan & Fordyce $1.8M from Moore
- Anderson, Das, Ross, Rust $1M from Keck
High-impact publications:
PREVIOUS BOOKLETS
2016 Scialog-MCL Conference Booklet [634KB PDF]
2015 Scialog-MCL Conference Booklet [723KB PDF]