Transposable (or mobile) genetic elements play a crucial role in the living world and are present in all domains of life. These jumping genes, originally thought to be a genetic curiosity, are now proving to be ubiquitous and immensely important. They have a profound influence on the structure and function of the genomes in all organisms they occupy.
Discovered by Barbara McClintock (Nobel Prize of Medicine in 1983), transposable elements are central to all biological processes, with considerable implications in medicine and agriculture. Transposon research covers a broad spectrum of organisms and a large variety of biological processes and methodologies.
The goal of ICTE 2020 is to provide a multidisciplinary forum for scientists from diverse fields such as biochemistry, structural biology, ecology, genomics, bioinformatics, plant biology, microbiology, neurobiology, aging research, or oncology. As previous editions of this congress, we hope that it will be a fertile ground to foster unconventional interactions and novel cross-disciplinary collaborations.
For our great pleasure, the EMBO will be associated to the organization of the 2020 edition.Again, this fourth ICTE meeting will bring together researchers from multiple countries around the world that are studying many aspects of mobile elements in any taxon.