This meeting was planned by three organizers, Detlev Arendt (EMBL), Mitsuyasu Hasebe (NIBB) and Shigeru Kurtani (RIKEN, CDB), to address current problems in evolutionary biology at different hierarchical levels of animal and plant life. The levels discussed included genomes, gene regulatory networks at the micro-level and organelles, cell types, organs, and morphology of species at the macro-level. Among the many meetings in evolutionary biology meetings, in which typically only a few limited topics of similar levels are discussed, this meeting was unique in that it overviewed the evolution of organismal life and brought the interconnectivity of the logic underlying different layers of evolutional events into focus. The life and evolutionary strategies of a variety of organisms, from single-celled organisms such as bacteria and yeast to higher plants and vertebrate including mammals, were presented and discussed not only with mechanistic insights but also from the aspect of their impact on the history of organismal life.