Welcome to the 74th Annual Meeting of the Japan Society for Cell Biology

Conference President Naoko Imamoto Cellular Dynamics Lab., CPR, RIKEN

We are pleased to announce that the 74th Annual Meeting of the Japan Society for Cell Biology will be held at Tower Hall Funabori in Edogawa-ku, Tokyo, from June 28 (Tuesday) to June 30 (Thursday), 2022. The theme for this conference is "Let's get together and talk about science," which is conventionally a natural phrase. We use this phrase for this conference, hoping that the Covid-19 pandemic will come to an end and that all of you will be able to participate and actively talk about science. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Yukiko Goto (University of Tokyo), who has made a great contribution to our society, Dr. Ulrike Kutay (Director, Institute of Biochemistry, ETH Zurich, Switzerland), whom I mostly respect in my research field of organaization, function and dynamics of cell nucleus, and Dr. Job Dekker (University of Massachusetts/HHMI), who created and contributed to develop Hi-C technology, a revolutionary method to reveal the higher-order structure of chromatin, graciously accepted to give the plenary lecture even in the midst of the corona disaster. In 2022 Feb, Dr. Dekker had to cancel the meeting for medical reasons. Dr. Tamotsu Yoshimori (Osaka University), an expert of Autophagy study, kindly accepted to give a plenary lecture. We sincerely hope a rapid recovery for Dr Dekker, and we are very grateful to Dr Yoshimori.
　The Society for Cell Biology is rather compact society that allow us to see the faces of the participants at the conference, which is a great advantage. It is fun and meaningful to deepen friendships with colleagues in the field you know well at the conference, but I also hope that the conference will provide an opportunity to expand new interactions. Cell biology is one of the fundamental field that enables to understand life. In recent years, the field of cell biology has made dramatic progress, for example, new microscopy techniques to reveal details of the internal structures of cells and their dynamics are developing extensively. In addition, in order to know the specific mechanisms of cellular reactions and to understand how cells work by overseeing each reaction, it is necessary to incorporate and promote research from all fields, including molecular biology, biochemistry, imaging technology, structural biology, genomics, proteomics, and computational science. I believe that cell biology will further develop into an important academic field in the life sciences while encompassing these disciplines.
This year's conference will take into account the main categories of the Society for Cell Biology (latest technology, cell adhesion and extracellular matrix, cell proliferation, differentiation, and death, chromosome, nucleus, and gene expression, cytoskeleton and motility, immunity, intracellular trafficking and organelles, protein life cycle, and signal transduction). We would like to provide an opportunity for our members to actively interact with these research areas. 
In addition to the usual selection committee for the Best Presentation Award for Young Scientists, we will pick up symposium presentations from the general abstracts and plan oral presentations by selection, so that young scientists can actively participate in the conference.
　Lastly, I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to the many companies, organizations, and researchers who have agreed to sponsor, co-sponsor, and support this conference.