Preface

This special issue of Acta Crystallographica Section D contains the Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on the Crystallization of Biological Macromolecules (ICCBM10), which took place in Beijing, China from 5 to 8 June 2004. The conference, under the chair of Professor Zihe Rao, not only demonstrated the maturity of biocrystallization as a science, but also addressed the many challenges that still lie ahead. Particular emphasis was given at ICCBM10 to new concepts, methods and technologies to increase the efficiency of biomacromolecular crystallization for today's crystallographic demands.

As the guest editors of these proceedings, we would like to express our sincerest gratitude to the authors of the 36 papers which were accepted for this special issue. All articles were rigorously reviewed to the high standard we have come to expect from Acta Crystallographica. We would also like to thank the many referees who gave up their time to assess the manuscripts. We cannot forget to thank the dedicated staff at the IUCr for their patience, invaluable help and kind advice during the often laborious task of compiling this issue. Finally, we would like to extend our gratitude to the many sponsors of ICCBM10 who helped to bring this conference to fruition. In particular, we are grateful to Mar Research, Rigaku and Beckman–Coulter for providing fellowships to young scientists to participate in the conference.

Macromolecular crystallization is a rapidly changing field, and we feel that the results presented here give both a good summary of achievements reported at ICCBM10 and a representable overview of the state of the art in biocrystallization in 2004.