The Fourth NIBB-EMBL Symposium was held gathering distinguished researchers in the field of the biology of protein conjugation from Europe, USA and Japan. There were 27 oral presentations, of which 12 were by foreign invitees, and 18 poster presentations. The symposium was a successful one as shown in the following comment given by a participant.

 The NIBB-EMBL conference in Okazaki, Japan this past December was an outstanding international conference that included scientist from Japan, Europe and the US. It was an exciting meeting with considerable discussion both during the meeting sessions and the social activities. The program included innovative technologies in structural biology, live cell imaging and molecular biology. Each speaker presented new unpublished data and discussed the key questions that need to be addressed in their field. New insights into the roles for ubiquitin and ubiquitin-related molecules in cell signaling, membrane trafficking and protein turn-over were presented. It was the best meeting in 2006 that I attended covering these key topics in cell and molecular biology. (Scott D. Emr, UCSD, USA)