The Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) on Mammalian DNA Repair provides graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and other scientists with comparable levels of training to interact with each other and present their latest findings. Additionally, this meeting offers young scientists the opportunity to interact with a keynote speaker and panelists from different areas including academia, industry, scientific publishing, patent law, etc.

Our DNA is constantly exposed to endogenous (e.g. reactive oxygen species) and exogenous sources of damage (e.g. UV). Furthermore, several approaches for treating cancers rely on inducing DNA damage (e.g. radiation). Normal cells can cope with such damage due to a large number of proteins involved in the recognition and repair of DNA damage. Understanding the role of each of these proteins is critical to uncovering how the integrity of the human genome is maintained and propagated. Furthermore, these studies will also provide insight into how genome instability arises when DNA repair proteins and pathways are compromised in human disease such as cancers.

This year, the Mammalian DNA Repair GRS will be focused on understanding the causes of varying DNA damage lesions, mechanisms that contribute to genome maintenance, and the cellular response to aberrant repair and genome instability. The oral and poster presentations will be focused on highlighting unpublished or recent findings in the field of mammalian DNA repair, spanning basic research and the clinical implications of the findings. Furthermore, the meeting will feature a career panel which will have scientists from academia, industry, publishing, etc.