The Tapestry of Life: Lateral Transfers of Heritable Elements

Beckman Center of the National Academies at Irvine, California
December 12-13, 2005
Organizers: Jonathan Eisen, Siv Andersson, Jeffrey Gordon, and Claire Fraser
Co-Chairs: Jeffrey Gordon and Claire Fraser

Sunday, December 11
Evening registration, informal gathering of speakers and participants, Hyatt Regency Newport Beach hotel

Monday, December 12
7:00 AM Poster setup

7:30 AM Breakfast

8:45 AM Greetings, Jeffrey Gordon
Introductory comments about purpose/goals of meeting

Session I: Mechanisms and Experimental Studies of LGT (9:00 AM -12:30 PM)
Global Phage Diversity and the Movement of Genes, Forest Rohwer (San Diego State University)
Prochlorococcus Diversity: How to Dominate the Oceans with 2000 Genes, Penny Chisholm (MIT)
LGT in the Human Colon: How Much and How Important?, Abigail Salyers (University of Illinois)
Molecular Machinery for Lateral Transfer of Introns, Marlene Belfort (Wadsworth Center, NYS Department of Health)

12:30 PM - 1:30 PM Lunch

Session II: Methods of Detection (1:45 PM - 5:45 PM)
Measuring Non-Random LGT Among Bacterial Lineages, Jeffrey Lawrence (University of Pittsburgh)
Are Horizontal Gene Transfers the Most Disturbing Limitation for Inferring Prokaryotic Phylogeny?, Herve Philippe (University of Montreal)
Relationships Between Contemporary and Extinct Genome Sequences within the Network of Life, Christos Ouzounis (European Bioinformatics Institute)
The Ring of Life and the Origin of Eukaryotes, James Lake (UCLA)

End session with panel discussion

6:00 PM - 7:30 PM Poster Session

7:30 PM Dinner

Tuesday, December 13
7:30 AM Breakfast

Session III: Case Studies (8:30 AM - 12:00 PM) - Siv Andersson (Chair)
Goals: More in depth presentations of illustrative/provocative case studies of LGT

Plant Mitochondrial Genomes: Unexpected Bounties of Lateral Gene Transfer, Jeffrey Palmer (Indiana University)
Enterococcal Pheromone-Responsive Plasmids: Broad-Host Range Transfer Controlled by Narrow-Host Range Cell-Cell Signaling, Gary Dunny (University of Minnesota)
How to Recover the History of the Archaeal Domain, despite Lateral Gene Transfer?, Patrick Forterre (University of Paris)
Comparative Alpha-Proteobacterial Genomics, Siv Andersson (University of Uppsala)

12:15 PM - 1:15 PM Lunch

Session IV: Evolutionary Implications of LGT (1:30 PM - 3:30 PM) - Jonathan Eisen (Chair)
Environmental Genomics and LGT: Can we Identify Organisms through their DNA if all Organisms are Chimeras?, Jonathan Eisen (The Institute for Genomic Research)
Inferring Eukaryotic Divergences, Sandra Baldauf (University of York)
Impact of Lateral Gene Transfer on the Eukaryotic Nuclear Genome, Patrick Keeling (University of British Columbia)
"Web of Life", Ford Doolittle (Dalhousie University)

3:30 PM - 5:00 PM Wrap-Up: Impact, Applications, Future Challenges
Comparative Microbial Genomics: Insights into Evolution and Organismal Diversity, Claire Fraser (The Institute for Genomic Research)

Panel Discussion of major future intellectual/disciplinary/technical challenges for the field