Please check the Deep Hypha site (near top at the URL listed in my signature) and think up which items from the first meeting (under activities) might be handled by e-mail.  We are going to be severly limited for time at Salt Lake City, so we need some discussions by e-mail.  Let me know your suggestions, then we'll have a go at it.

Meredith

A group of mycologists participated in a proposal to NSF to plan an attack on a phylogeny for all fungi and fungus-like  organisms. Officially the proposal was called "Research Coordination Networks in Biological Sciences: A Phylogeny for Kingdom Fungi." The project was dubbed "Deep Hypha" by an NSF program officer. The original proposal can be viewed at http://lsb380.plbio.lsu.edu/network. We welcome participation
by all interested fungal systematists and, in fact, emphasize that the project cannot be successful without the participation of as many
mycologists as possible.

The Deep Hypha group will meet at the annual MSA meeting in Salt Lake City on Saturday in the previously scheduled spot for that evening after the foray (Saturday, August 25, 7 to 10 p.m., Room 251E, Salt Palace Convention Center).  Please feel free to join in on the discussion.  Also, there will be Internet discussions throughout the year, so send us your name and address (e-mail and postal).  Please visit the web site.

Joey Spatafora
John Taylor
Meredith Blackwell

Dear Deep Hypha Group:

1) There has been a change since the last message was sent about our first meeting to be held in Salt Lake City at the MSA meeting. Originally, two sessions were planned.  Now because of a conflict with "Welcome and Plenary Session: Intersociety Cooperation and Collaborations [IRONY] (9:30-12 p.m. Ballroom EFGH) was discovered two months after the original scheduling, the Deep Hypha group will meet only once on Saturday in the previously scheduled spot for that evening after the foray (Saturday, August 25, 7 to 10 p.m., Room 251E, Salt Palace Convention Center).

2) Because we are limited to three hours, there will need to be a number of on line discussions before.  Joey Spatafora will be setting up the official page, but for now I still have the project on my server in a slightly expanded format.  One thing that we need to change is the place of the meetings.  For the purpose of the proposal we tentatively suggested a few sites as examples.  Now we need to try to set up some real places for meetings.  February 2002 will be in Baton Rouge for Mardi Gras --mostly on the weekend. Petersen and Hughes (Tennessee) and Porter (Georgia) have made offers for meetings. Are you still interested in hosting meetings? Are others interested? Please let me know.

We need to consider several factors when planning: easy of flying in to accommodate people with tight teaching schedules (most of us); meeting at a time so that we do not need ot miss lectures (weekends or holidays); and cost (we each get a flat amount of money for airfare, lodging, and food).

Also, we need names of anyone else interested in participating (students and post docs especially). The travel money will be stretched out a much as possible, but we did use the maximum figure allowed by NSF in the budget, and we still have little extra for other participants have expenses paid. However, if there are generous PI with money to burn (not many of us!), we can pay some of the expenses of our lab groups to allow broader paid participation.  I will let you know what is happening on this count if you can ever consider making such a gesture.

Look at the web site for Deep Hypha (linked at the top of my home page --URL given below in my signature section).

Let me know about anything you may wonder about.

Best regards,
Meredith

Two things:
1) We are trying to make a list of all students and postdocs from your labs who are interested in the project for the web site.  Please send them to me in the following format (indicated as students or postdocs):

Students
Ning Zhang <nzhang@unix1.sncc.lsu.edu>
Department of Biological Sciences
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803 USA
225-578-8562

Postdoctoral Associates
Sung-Oui Suh <ssuh@unix1.sncc.lsu.edu>
Department of Biological Sciences
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803 USA
225-578-8562

2) Remember, we want everyone to take part, but because of the funding limitation, only two people from each lab will be able to receive travel money once a year. However, we'll try to keep meeting costs low whenever possible so more people can get to them with the budgeted travel funds ($816/person/year/2 per lab). Since most of you have not seen the budget, the breakdown is:

a- almost everything went to travel for the five years ($428,400)
b- conference facility, audiovisual rental for the five years ($10,000)
c- undergraduate help for booking rooms, photocopying, acquiring material, doing leg work, etc. for five years ($38,017)
d- indirect costs (15%) for five years ($14,606)
Grand total $499,183 (of the $500,000 allowed by NSF)

This is all by way of saying that the budget is tight, and we will need to be careful, so that we can include as many new participants as possible.

Send in the students and postdocs!

Meredith

Deep Hypha News is included here on 1) the MSA meeting with APS in Salt Lake City, 2) the next and first stand-alone meeting at Mardi Gras (2002), 3) web site plans, and 4) plans for publicizing the work at hand.

 1) Deep Hypha: A Research Coordination Network in Biological Sciences for a Phylogeny for Kingdom Fungi.  Anyone interested in fungal evolution and phylogeny is urged to attand.  This includes all researchers, especially students and postdocs. (Meredith Blackwell, Joseph W. Spatafora, John W. Taylor, coordinators)
*Saturday, August 25, 7 to 10 p.m., Room 251E, Salt Palace Convention Center
*Sunday, August 26, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., Room 250A, Salt Palace Convention Center.

More soon, but we wanted you to be certain to know the dates for plane reservations.  We tried to make the Deep Hypha gathering as early as possible because some people will need to go home early to teach.

This is one of the two meetings planned for each year, and the one with the society is NOT to be reimbursed.

2) Plans for the next meeting are underway. Because this is the last time cheap ($50 or $60 with room for several people in each room and low surcharge for extras) will be available in an on campus former dormitory (Pleasant Hall) used for meetings, We are planning it for Baton Rouge on the LSU campus around Mardi Gras.

The plan is to have it on Saturday and Saturday before Mardi Gras 2002, so that we can go to New Orleans on Monday and Tuesday (your expense,  but you can stay over in Pleasant Hall and go and come, but you must book ahead. More information will be sent out soon, but the dates might be handy for planning.  The Mardi Gras Deep Hypha group will meet as follows:
Arrival Friday 8 February 2002
Meet Saturday 9 February 2002 and Sunday 10 February 2002
The participants that that got a travel allotment in the original proposal will receive $816 each and an extra allotment of $816 for a second person from the lab (student or postdoc).  The cheap price of the rooms hopefully will allow for more people to come in cheaply.  Remember, though food is included in the $816.  This was set up so that there will be little record keeping necessary to abide by the complex Louisiana state travel rules.

see http://www.mardigrasday.com/mardigras/default.php if you need more details about Mardi Gras.

3) Joey is setting up a web site for the group.  Please send any ideas for making it as nice as (or better than) the Deep Green site at <http://ucjeps.herb.berkeley.edu/bryolab/greenplantpage.html>.  We'd like
to have list-serve and perhaps chat room with lots of student and international participation.  You make suggest things we could post now as a service (e.g., a list of all primers that have ever been used on fungi, new sequences, new papers of interest, etc.)

4) Pretty soon this will all be publicized more widely so that we are even more inclusive.  This will be done in Inoculum and on the MSA bulletin board, etc.  You can send in a list of places/people that need to be notified (to Blackwell).