Preface

This issue of Acta Crystallographica Section D contains the Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on the Crystallization of Biological Macromolecules (ICCBM9), which took place in Jena, Germany from March 23 to 28, 2002. It is probably safe to state that the conference impressively demonstrated that biocrystallogenesis has come of age and has grown into a mature science. More about the meeting is said in the introduction by the outgoing chairmen of the ICCBM Advisory Board, Drs Alexander Chernov and Larry DeLucas, on the following pages. As the editors of this special issue, we would like to thank the authors of the 51 contributions which were accepted for these proceedings. All articles underwent the same rigorous reviewing process that is standard for Acta Crystallographica. We are very grateful indeed to the referees who did a wonderful job in assessing the manuscripts and returning them in due time. Thanks are also due to the dedicated staff at the IUCr who, very patiently, followed the sometimes cumbersome process of compiling these proceedings and who were always helpful with good advice. Last but not least, we would like to thank the sponsors of ICCBM9 who helped the conference and this special issue become a reality. We are particulaly grateful to the European Structural Biology Forum (ESBF), an EU-funded network of European Research Infrastructures active in structural biology, for having organized a workshop on `Crystallography for Structural Genomics' as part of the conference. The proceedings of the workshop are included in this issue.

We feel that the result of the efforts on behalf of all involved mirrors nicely the achievements reported at ICCBM9 and gives a good overview of biocrystallization as it stands in 2002.