International Structural Biology meeting in Tsukuba

The First International Symposium on Diffraction Structural Biology was held in Tsukuba in the splendid EPOCHAL Tsukuba International Congress centre during 28–31 May 2003. The symposium was conceived by one of the science committees of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), established in January 2000 under the chairmanship of Professor Noriyoshi Sakabe. The committee's remit is to promote medical and pharmaceutical sciences, protein engineering, biology and other related fields on the basis of three-dimensional macromolecular structures. The symposium brought together all of the diffraction tools in a unique manner. For the first time there were sessions on structural biology using neutron, synchrotron and electron diffraction. A very full programme was provided over three days covering all aspects of structural biology using all of these diffraction techniques. Topics ranged from crystallization to structural genomics/proteomics. Automation was not only seen in the context of X-rays but also in the context of electron diffraction. The meeting was extremely well run. It was organized by Dr Nuobo Kamiya who was congratulated for putting together an excellent programme. The proceedings of the meeting will be published in the Journal of Synchrotron Radiation.