New inroads to development.

The 2006 symposium of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, was entitled ‘Logic of development: new strategies and concepts’. The purpose of the meeting was to uncover how our understanding of the logic of developmental processes is changing in the light of novel techniques and strategies. The speakers provided a comprehensive overview of diverse topics, such as the power of functional genomics and imaging approaches, and the phenomenon of non-coding RNAs and their role in development. A wide range of processes and mechanisms at the molecular, cellular and organismic level were presented, as were many novel concepts and strategies, which together highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary approaches.