SMBE Satellite Meeting: Evolutionary Biochemistry of Insect Antimicrobial Peptides The SMBE Satellite Meeting on Evolutionary Biochemistry of Insect Antimicrobial Peptides will be held at the University of Houston (Texas, USA) on Oct 13-15, 2025. Microbes that cause disease to humans, livestock, crops, and wild species are incredibly diverse and rapidly evolve resistance to existing antibiotic drugs. Naturally occurring insect antimicrobial peptides have tremendous promise to help address the challenge of antibiotic resistance, but realizing this potential requires transdisciplinary collaboration across disciplines including genomics, microbiology, biochemistry, data science, and engineering. The conference will promote growth in this area by bringing together researchers from a variety of disciplines and career stages to understand modes of action and potential applications of insect AMPs as novel antibiotic agents. Research areas covered by this conference will include: - Phylogenetic and comparative genomics of arthropod antimicrobial peptides - Novel antimicrobials, biomimetics design, and peptide biochemistry - Microbiology, in vitro and in vivo experimentation - Machine learning and data science - Translational research There will be multiple breakout sessions at the conference, which we intend to use to develop at least one white paper on Insect Antimicrobial Peptides and Antibiotic Drug Design. The SMBE Satellite Meeting on Evolutionary Biochemistry of Insect Antimicrobial Peptides is FREE to attend, but attendance requires admission following review of your application. Application review begins on July 1, 2025, and will continue on a rolling basis until the deadline of July 14, 2025. Applications from Early Career Researchers and scholars from diverse research areas are highly encouraged. Travel awards are available to support attendance for early career scholars. Are you interested in the meeting but cannot attend in person? Please consider attending online (also free). Online attendees will be eligible to give talks and will be invited to participate in discussions. Please visit the meeting website for more information, including application and registration links: https://uh.edu/nsm/biology-biochemistry/news-events/smbe-meeting/ Richard Meisel rpmeisel@uh.edu "Meisel, Richard P" (to subscribe/unsubscribe the EvolDir send mail to golding@mcmaster.ca)