UW News

August 14, 2002

Annual Northwest Microarray Conference is Aug. 14 to 16

The third annual Northwest Microarray Conference will be held Aug. 14 to 16 at Benaroya Hall in downtown Seattle. The conference showcases research in gene identification and protocols, protein studies, bioinformatics, and array applications specific to cancer research.

The conference is organized by Dr. Roger Bumgarner, director of the UW Center for Expression Arrays and research assistant professor of microbiology in the UW School of Medicine.

Microarray technology allows researchers to analyze thousands of genes simultaneously, thus speeding the pace of gene and protein research. Panelists from as far away as Taiwan and Spain are expected for the conference.

“This year’s conference spans a broad range of both new technologies and new applications of functional genomics approaches,” Bumgarner says. “In particular, the keynote talks focus on either novel uses of DNA array technology or the integration of DNA array data with data from other sources.”

The keynote speakers include:

– Dr. David Morris, UW professor of biochemistry, whose research interests focus on mechanisms of translational control of gene expression in eukaryotic cells;

– Dr. Timothy Galitski of the Institute of Systems Biology and an affiliate faculty member in the UW Department of Zoology, who will speak about “Modular Integrative Modeling and Reprogramming of the Yeast Filamentation System;”

– Dr. John Quackenbush of The Institute of Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Md., where he leads a number of research projects in DNA microarray analysis and bioinformatics. He will speak about “Putting the Genome Back into Functional Genomics.”

Agilent Technologies is sponsoring the conference, and there is a fee to attend. For more information, see the Web site at http://nwmac.org

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