IMBA organizes the International Marine Biotechnology Conferences (IMBCs). The IMBCs are widely recognized as the premier conference in marine biotechnology in the world, bringing together world leaders in the field since 1989. With extensive and wide-sweeping support from both the private and public sectors, all IMBCs can boast having excellent attendance by local and international scientists. The 11th International Marine Biotechnology Conference (IMBC) was held in Baltimore, Maryland, USA from August 29 - September 2, 2016 at the Hyatt Regency in Baltimore's Historic Inner Harbor. The conference theme is "Health, Wealth and Innovation" and jointly hosted by the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology (IMET).

Prof. Xiang’s group have been arrived Baltimore at 29, August. We listened the plenary speeches related to marine genomics (UNDERSTANDING, PROTECTING AND UTILIZING MARINE BIODIVERSITY THROUGH GENOMICS), Symbiosis (DEEP-SEA SYMBIOSES AND POSSIBILITY OF SYMBIOSIS ENGINEERING) and marine biofuels (NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR GROWING MICROALGAL INDUSTRY；DISSECTING THE PROMISES AND FAILURES OF BIOTECHNOLOGY TO PRODUCE ALGAL BIOFUELS AT A SCALE NECESSARY DISRUPT GLOBAL DEMAND FOR FOSSIL FUELS). We also attended the program sections of “MARINE GENOMICS, METAGENOMICS AND BIOINFORMATICS，GMOS IN AQUACULTURE，MARINE ALGAL ‘OMICS AND BIOTECHNOLOG，SHELLFISH GENOMICS”.

As invited by the organizers of this conference, the three members of our group have made presentations in different sections. Prof. Xiang have made the presentation of “GENOME SEQUENCING AND ANALYSIS OF SEA CUCUMBER (Apostichopus japonicus)”. Prof. Zhang have made the presentation of “COMPLEX GENOME SEQUENCING OF THE PACIFIC WHITE SHRIMP, Litopenaeus vannamei”, Dr. Yuan have made the presentation of “Utilizing RNA_Seq data for phylogenomic and adaptive evolution analysis of shrimps”.

During the conference, we met Prof. Du, and consulted the relevant research questions about gene editing, which will be beneficial for the gene editing researches of shrimps. Prof. Du will come to China next month, and we invited him to make presentation in IOCAS then. Besides, we also communicated with the researchers that interested in the marine genomics, and shared the experiences with each other.