Seefeld Meeting on Protein Modularity

The concept of modularity unifies biology across scales from protein sequence-based modularity to systems level modularity. Biological systems evolve by duplicating and diversifying modules, which drive biological function from individual proteins to networks and phenotypes. Recent major advances in the field including the increase in throughput of protein interaction screening, advancements in cryoEM, AI, and others, have dramatically increased the scale at which we are able to study modularity in cellular function and the depth of insights we can get. In its 20 years of history, the modularity meeting has presented the state-of-the-art in protein science and the study of modularity across scales. It brings together a group of scientists that do not typically cross paths at conferences, coming from diverse backgrounds such as biochemistry, structural, network, synthetic and computational biology. The modularity meeting provides a springboard for unique synergies that take advantage of these interdisciplinary developments to advance protein modularity research and discovery of protein functions. We request financial support from Wellcome Trust for this year's meeting with the focus to redefine the goals of this community and attract sustainable funding for future meetings.