This symposium addresses how population genetic variation and the sequencing of ancient DNA have the potential to change the way we think about human history and our evolutionary past, and how we might study genetic variation in the future.

This meeting seeks to bring together experts to discuss how the brain integrates information about sensory inputs and internal state into behavioural responses. This topic will be illustrated by studies in different model organisms and will range from sensory-motor to cognitive behaviour. It will foster interdisciplinary discussions between molecular, physiological, behavioural and computational neuroscientists.

This new symposium will provide a forum for this emerging field of cell type and tissue origination in the single-cell genomics era. We will discuss fundamental questions such as the origins of cell types in the evolution of multicellularity, their diversification in divergent animal lineages and the molecular evolution of regulatory networks underlying the specification of cell types and tissues.

The symposium aims at bringing together world-leading experts in the fields of mechanobiology, cell biology and developmental biology studying the mechanical basis of cell and tissue morphogenesis.

This symposium will cover a broad range of topics in prokaryotic biology, including antibiotic-related research, network biology, bacterial communities, cell biology, regulation & signalling, pathogenesis and evolution. Emphasis will be placed on novel approaches that drive each field or have the potential to revolutionise future research in microbiology.

This Symposium will provide a platform for bringing together leading researchers from computational biology, various “omics” fields and technology development to present their latest work and discuss applications, future ideas and the challenges for integrating large-scale biological data across different biological technologies and disciplines. A specific focus will be to discuss data integration of high-throughput technologies with molecular biology approaches. This conference aims to inspire novel ideas for data integration across the different omics fields and hence may sparkle exciting new future collaborations.

Next generation sequencing, genome editing, deep mutational scans, and single cell biology are opening up unprecedented opportunities to understand how genetic variation alters molecular mechanisms to cause phenotypic variation amongst individuals, including quantitative traits and human disease.  The first EMBO | EMBL Symposium on Systems Genetics: from Genomes to Complex Traits will focus on the central questions of when and how do changes in genotype result in changes in phenotype.  The meeting will bring together groups using experimental, statistical and mechanistic modelling approaches to address these questions at different scales and in diverse model systems, including for human disease.

The symposium will bring together the leading developers of imaging methods with cutting edge applications that illustrate how imaging can answer biological questions. We will place emphasis on methods that are able to capture the dynamics of life, spanning the whole range from molecular resolution to imaging of whole organisms.

This symposium will explore the diverse, dynamic and multifaceted roles of RNA across a spectrum of cellular processes. It will provide an interdisciplinary discussion of the roles of non-coding RNAs in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes, with the aim of enhancing our understanding of gene regulation and function.

Metabolism and epigenetics are intricately linked, playing key roles in development, cancer, immune signaling and aging. This symposium brings together world-leading researchers exploring this nexus and will focus in particular on how metabolites and metabolic networks impact gene regulation, on recently discovered roles of metabolites in disease and how this open novel therapeutic avenues.