Dear evoldir members, We are very excited about this upcoming symposium at SMBE2024 in Mexico in July 2024, organized in part by several University of Auckland postdocs. Please forward to your networks as you see fit. Details about deadlines and travel awards follow. Thanks very much! Cheers, Nick CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: Structural Phylogenetics Symposium at SMBE 2024 in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico! Explore cutting-edge methodologies & applications peering into evolutionary history with the lens of protein structure. Abstracts due March 15, 2024: https://smbe2024.org Application for a travel award is also available: https://www.smbe.org/smbe/AWARDS Symposium description: https://smbe2024.org Submission of abstracts is now open! Deadline for abstracts: March 15th, 2024 July 7-11, 2024 Puerto Vallarta, Mexico Convention Center Puerto Vallarta SMBE 2024 SMBE 2024 Accepted Symposia Topic 1: Phylogenetics and Comparative Genomics. 1. Structural phylogenetics: investigating deep evolutionary history using protein structure. Organizers: Caroline Puente-Lelievre, Jordan Douglas, Ashar Malik. Invited speakers: Betul Kacar, Martin Steinegger. Description or the symposium: Recent advances in AI protein structure predictions have revolutionised biological research. The implications for phylogenetics may be vast. The combination of (1) high-quality structure predictions for millions of proteins with (2) methods that can efficiently include this information in homology searches and the reconstruction of protein history (via structural distance metrics, or FoldSeek's representation of tertiary structure as a sequence of characters) raises the possibility of more accurate phylogenetics even into the "twilight zone" where amino acid sequence similarity has been lost. Structural phylogenetics thus emerges as an increasingly practicable discipline that combines structural, evolutionary, and computational biology to inform deep relationships and evolutionary events, even those that predate the last universal common ancestor. This symposium showcases structural phylogenetic methodologies and applications, either for inferring phylogeny or reconstructing the evolution of ancestral structures and functions, and is aimed at fostering state-of-the-art interdisciplinary work from researchers from a variety of disciplines and career stages. Recent papers: Puente-Lelievre, Caroline; Malik, Ashar J.; Douglas, Jordan; Ascher, David; Baker, Matthew; Allison, Jane; Poole, Anthony; Lundin, Daniel; Fullmer, Matthew; Bouckert, Remco; Kim, Hyunbin; Steinegger, Martin; Matzke, Nicholas J. (2023). Tertiary-interaction characters enable fast, model-based structural phylogenetics beyond the twilight zone. bioRxiv, 571181. December 12, 2023. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.12.571181v2.full https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.12.12.571181 van Kempen M, Kim SS, Tumescheit C, Mirdita M, Lee J, Gilchrist CLM, S�ding J, Steinegger M. Fast and accurate protein structure search with Foldseek. Nat Biotechnol. doi: 10.1038/s41587-023-01773-0 Moi, David; Bernard, Charles; Steinegger, Martin; Nevers, Yannis; Langleib, Mauricio; Dessimoz, Christophe (2023). Structural phylogenetics unravels the evolutionary diversification of communication systems in gram-positive bacteria and their viruses. bioRxiv 2023.09.19.558401. doi: 10.1101/2023.09.19.558401 nickmatzke.ncse@gmail.com (to subscribe/unsubscribe the EvolDir send mail to golding@mcmaster.ca)