The Gordon Conference on Signal Transduction within the Nucleus will be the third one of a series held every other year. This conference provides an outstanding forum to present and discuss new findings for how signaling pathways participate in the regulation of nuclear processes. The unique angle established in the past meetings is the synergy gained from participants taking interdisciplinary approaches to connect signaling pathways to nuclear functions. This will be strengthened and enhanced in the 2009 meeting. Elucidating the mechanisms by which nuclear enzymes and macromolecular machines contribute to allowing an organism to respond and survive in an ever-chaning enviroment will be essential to gain a full understanding of the nuclear dysfunctions that contribute directly to disease processes, including cancer biology and genetic disorders.

The meeting will convene approximately 35 invited speakers representing key areas of nuclear signal transduction, with a total of 150 participants. The program will consist of morning and evening sessions that broadly address cutting-edge issues in the following areas: nucleo-cytoplasmic signaling, nuclear lipid signaling, nuclear receptor signaling, agonist-induced nuclear lipid and carbohydrate metabolism, chromatin regulation, DNA damage/repair pathways, nuclear organization and spatial architecture, nuclear membrane dynamics, RNA processing and export, and control of nuclear division. Small, intensive poster sessions will be convened in the later afternoons, allowing all participants to contribute to and learn about these topics. Informal discussions among established and junior principal investigators, postdoctoral fellows, and students will be stimulated during early-afternoon and late-evening breaks. We anticipate that this will be a highly novel meeting that offers the opportunity for investigators studyiing many newly discovered signaling pathways and nuclear functions to be connected.