BIOL Catches Spring Fever

Starting in 2008, ACS members won't have to wait until the fall national meeting to get their fill of what's new at the interface of chemistry and biology. At the ACS national meeting in New Orleans next April, the ACS Division of Biological Chemistry (BIOL) will host a spring program for the first time in nearly a decade.

BIOL is the society's second-largest division and among its oldest, says John S. Blanchard, an enzymologist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University, in New York City, who will serve as the division's president in 2008. Established in 1913, the division has met just once per year for more than a half-century.

The division's decision to expand its programming to both spring and fall meetings reflects the intensity of research activity at the interface of chemistry and biology, notes Tadhg P. Begley, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell University and the chair of BIOL's spring program. "Research in biological chemistry is blossoming," he says. "There is far more happening than we can cover in our fall program alone."

The division hopes the move will expand opportunities for young investigators to talk about their research, Blanchard adds. "Our fall programs are dominated by award symposia and invited talks by heavy hitters" in the field, he says. "Expanding to the spring will give our younger investigators an opportunity to get needed exposure for their work."

BIOL plans to continue—and perhaps even expand—the spring program in the coming years.

In addition to poster sessions, the inaugural program will feature four oral symposia: "Frontiers in Chemical Biology," "New Techniques in Chemical Biology," "Biological Macromolecules," and "Enzymes & Pathways." Each symposium will consist of an invited talk from an established researcher and a number of 20-minute talks from younger researchers, Begley says. The short talks will be chosen from the poster abstracts.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is Oct. 28.