Date: August 2-8, 2024
Location: GCE4-All Research Center, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA
Applications will be accepted until the workshop is full.
Application Information:
- Application vs. Registration: Completing an application will not register you to attend, nor does it guarantee acceptance to attend. Registration can only be completed once you have been accepted by the Conference Chair/Committee. If accepted, you will be notified via email with an unpublished link to register for the conference. Registration and payment arrangements are expected at that time.
- Payments: Payment in full (less any financial support awarded) is required at the time of registration.
- Financial Aid: We understand that your acceptance is sometimes conditional on the amount of financial aid provided to you. Note, at this time financial aid is only available to support workshop participants.
- Wait List: We anticipate the meeting to be full before the deadline. If the conference and/or workshop is oversubscribed you will be placed on a waiting list. Applications will be considered at the discretion of the conference chairs. One application per individual.
Important Dates:
- Acceptances will be announced on a rolling basis via email beginning at the end of February.
- Applications will be reviewed weekly with acceptances/rejections sent via email.
- Early bird registration ends on May 15, 2024. Once accepted we ask that you register early to lock in reduced prices and secure your spot!
Workshop Application – Financial Aid Request:
Full scholarship and half scholarship support is available for the GCE workshop. The number of scholarships available depends on a number of factors, including the level of financial support in a given year and the number of students requesting stipends. Scholarships are awarded to support those historically underrepresented in STEM research and education.
Course Fee:
Academic $2,250 until May 15th, and $3000 after May 15th.
Industrial $4,200 until May 15th and $5,000 after May 15th.
Description: The 2024 GCE4All Center Workshop will focus on the theory and practice of engineering amino-acyl tRNA synthetase (RS)/tRNA pairs for the encoding of non-canonical amino acids (ncAAs). Academic and industrial attendees are welcome and will receive hands-on training from Center scientists in the standard “double sieve” life/death selection strategies to identify novel RS variants with selectivity for an ncAA so that it can be encoded into proteins. All attendees will perform selections starting from a complete active site RS library with model ncAAs provided by the Center. In addition, academic attendees can bring to the workshop an ncAA of their choice that has never been encoded into proteins. A series of lectures will also be given on the theory, history, strengths and challenges of Genetic Code Expansion, with particular focus on practical considerations for engineering new RS/tRNA pairs, cloning and generating custom libraries of RS mutants. The intent is to have academic attendees leave the workshop with a pool of RS variants able to encode their ncAA that they can bring back to their laboratories to characterize and use in their research programs. Attendees are encouraged to apply early so that they can discuss with Center scientists prior to the Workshop the nature of the ncAA they would like to encode and feasibility of success.
Lectures:
- GCE Overview and status of the field.
- Fundamentals of library selections: screening tRNA synthetase variants that load and encode your ncAA.
- Overview of ncAA classes and categories, current status of the field.
- Characterizing synthetase selection hits – How good is good enough?
- Plasmid architecture and cloning (coli)
- Plasmid architecture and cloning (Mammalian Cells)
- How to design and build custom libraries
- Good, bad, the ugly – and the future of GCE