Over the last several years, new genome engineering tools have revolutionized the ability to interrogate biological systems, engineer innovative biotechnologies, and model and treat human disease. The genome engineering field continues to evolve at a frenzied pace, including both the development of new fundamental tools and their application to addressing societal needs. This Keystone Symposium will cover this spectrum of advances, including the most recent technological innovations in genome, epigenome, and transcriptome precision engineering. The conference will also highlight recent advances in developing human therapeutics with these tools, including emerging clinical trial results and preclinical examples of novel modes of intervention. The Symposium will include a variety of topics of interest to the broad research community, including next-generation applications such as high-throughput screening, synthetic biology, and chromatin and RNA imaging and diagnostics. Finally, the Symposium will conclude with examples of how emerging technologies can be integrated for an unprecedented level of resolution of cellular processes – such as genome engineering combined with single-cell analysis methods. Collectively, this meeting will build on its history of success by familiarizing the audience with the latest advances in tool development, providing an update on clinical application of these tools, and generating an appreciation for the breadth of scientific areas impacted by the Genome Engineering Revolution.

This new virtual meeting format came out of difficult circumstances, but your commitment to scientific progress is what inspired us to launch Keystone eSymposia. In these virtual meetings, we are capturing the same innovative essence of our in-person meetings that you've all created as a scientific community. Here, Debbie Johnson, our CEO, explains how we're going to do that.