Thank you to all participants, sponsors, exhibitors and speakers who helped make The EMBO Meeting 2010 a success. See you in Vienna for The EMBO Meeting 2011!

Fast-paced conceptual and technological advances are profoundly changing the landscape of molecular biology research in terms of the depth and nature of biological insights gained. We are particularly excited to organize and present the programme for The EMBO Meeting 2010 to highlight the dynamism of the field and feature many leading researchers as speakers. Reflecting an emphasis on functional and system-level insights, three plenary lecture sessions will be devoted to modern evolutionary biology, to molecular developmental biology and to the rapidly developing fields related to systems biology, such as network biology, functional genomics and synthetic biology.

A rich selection of topics will be addressed in 21 workshops, juxtaposing classical with less classical fields of research. Thus, workshops focusing on central themes such as cell signalling and division, chromosomal organization, genome stability, cell differentiation and pluripotency, epigenetics and mechanisms of gene regulation will be complemented by a series of sessions that will explore the new frontiers in molecular biology. These will present research devoted to the analysis on the global genetic makeup of entire bacterial communities (metagenomics), the application of molecular and computational techniques for the engineering of human-designed biological objects (synthetic biology), and the investigation of the inner working of complex genetic and metabolic networks.

Barcelona will undoubtedly captivate you as a city that pulses with life, a city where the past sits proudly with a contemporary life that is continually changing. As such, Barcelona and the Catalan region make the perfect home for centers of research excellence. There are 400 research groups in life sciences, 12 universities with 32,000 life science students, networks of science parks, plus 5.5 researchers per 1000 inhabitants and a research budget amounting to 1.44 percent of GDP.  We hope you have the opportunity to explore the city and region and visit some of the research centers.  

The EMBO Meeting 2010 promises a vibrant platform for scientific exchange between leading researchers and young molecular biologists just starting out on their research paths. We are very much looking forward to welcoming you to Barcelona for this exciting conference.

Denis Duboule CH	Luis Serrano ES