The symposium will be held in the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Beijing on May, 18-20, 2008. The symposium will cover a wide range of topics of systems and computational biology with an emphasis on organism development. The minister of Ministry of Health of the People's Republic of China, Zhu Chen is the chairman of the Advisor Committee for the Symposium. We welcome you to join us in this exciting event. Journal of Genetics and Genomics (JGG, http://www.jgenetgenomics.org/) is the co-organizer of the symposium. As an Elsevier journal, JGG is published in English and is one of China's leading journals in the life sciences. A special issue will be dedicated to publish papers and reports at the symposium. All invited speakers and registered attendants are welcome to submit their research papers of experimental and/or theoretical findings, reviews and perspectives in the area of developmental systems biology. The papers will be peer-reviewed and those that meet the journal standards will be published shortly after the meeting.