The goal of this meeting is to bring current understanding of biological mechanisms, including molecular mechanisms of genetics, genomic plasticity, epigenetics, protein- and RNA-based inheritance, stress, stress responses, stochasticity, and phenotypic variation and plasticity (among others), to bear on understanding of evolution, and the many medical and basic-science problems driven by evolution. We hope to unite what have been disparate fields: evolutionary biology/population genetics and mechanistic molecular genetics, genomics and molecular biology.
The modern synthesis of the early twentieth century fused Mendelian genetic concepts with Darwin’s theory of natural selection, giving birth to current evolutionary biology. But this foundation predates the molecular biology revolution that began in the 1950s and continues unslowed, including into modern medicine. On the one hand, traditional evolutionary biology has not always kept pace with changes to the basic assumptions of genetic inheritance and discoveries of non-genetic inheritance that have come from studies on molecular mechanisms. On the other hand, similarly, the focus of molecular biology on biological, biochemical and biophysical mechanisms has often ignored the critical roles of evolution in important medical and basic-biological problems.
This conference is aimed at the growing body of investigators attempting to straddle these disciplines. The goals are to catalyze more realistic views of mechanisms of evolution and their consequences in medicine and basic biology. Although molecular biology is only recently beginning to penetrate the arena of traditional evolutionary biology, integration of these disciplines is crucial for deeper understanding of evolution and biology in general. This conference will give a home and community to researchers doing this.
