The following list contains every Conference in the GRC Portfolio. Click on any title to view more detailed information for that particular Conference. The conference list can be sorted by name, discipline, initial year, or status by clicking on the appropriate column heading. The list can also be narrowed down in different ways by selecting one of the tabs below.

Status: Active	Discipline: Biological	Cycle: 24 Months	Initial Year: 1984
The existence of the Archaea as the third domain of life was discovered approximately 30 years ago. Since this time, tremendous progress has been made to understand the metabolic pathways and genetic regulons that underlie the often extreme life style of this diverse group of prokaryotes. While certain proteins involved in transcription, translation and replications are shared with the Eukarya, general metabolic diversity resulting in diverse carbon acquisition and energy substrate usage are common with the Bacteria. The Archaea are distinct by exhibiting unique features such as a methane production, unique photosynthesis via a single protein chromophore and the ability to thrive under extreme conditions such as extremely high or low temperature, salt saturation conditions, and extremely high and low pH. Although archaeal organisms represent approximately one third of life's evolutionary diversity and display many interesting and practical properties, Archaea are much less characterized than are organisms from the other two domains. The Gordon Research Conference (GRC) constitutes the most prestigious conference in the field on archaeal research. With the discovery of the methane-producing methanogenic archaea, the first GRC was held on methanogens in 1984 and continued every three years until 1993. At this time, it was recognized that the archaea constitute a diverse group of organisms that were more broadly studied resulting in cutting edge research on novel and unique metabolic features. To reflect the broadening research activities, the first GRC on Archaea was held in 1996 and was named "Archaea: Ecology Metabolism & Molecular Biology". This highly international conference is now held in a two-year cycle and expands on established themes centering on emerging archaea and archaeal viruses and their ecology, extremophilic enzymes and unusual metabolic pathways, mechanisms of archaeal transcription, translation, replication and recombination, and genomics and evolution.
Categories: Environment and Evolution, Microbes and Viruses

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