After 2 cancellations due to the pandemic, the Plant and Animal Genomes conference returned to its in-person format in January with its 30th edition. A number of the talks focused on the effects of climate change either on biodiversity or crop development. It seems only fitting then, that the weather provided a suitable demonstration with California experiencing one of the longest periods of sustained rainfall in many years.

The Washington DC Walter E. Washington Convention Center was the venue for the recent Cell Bio 2022 Meeting that took place on 3-7 December 2022.  Cell Bio 2022, the joint meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) and European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), is the largest yearly gathering for the Cell Biology community.

The International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF) had its annual Neuroinformatics Assembly from 12 ^th -16 ^th September 2022.

Live and in-person in Madison A big part of the life of a journal editor is to travel to conferences, keeping on top of the state-of-the art of fields of interest, as well as interacting the research community that publishes, edits and peer reviews for your journal.

The meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC), International Partner – BHL (Biodiversity Heritage Library) and National Partner – NatSCA (Natural Sciences Collections Association) took place in Edinburgh from June 5 ^th -10 ^th 2022.

The 12th international meeting on Visualizing Biological Data took place on March 16–18, 2022 (AKA VIZBI 2022). This conference is always a visual treat, and with its focus on transforming how Life Scientists view data from Molecular and Cellular Biology and Biomedical Science this year’s event was no exception.

As an Open Science journal, one of the main aims of GigaScience has always been to break down barriers. Both in the access of research and the underlying data and code supporting it, and the barriers holding back the researchers themselves. See our recent Review centering on inclusivity on the organization of meetings to see how it is important from an Open Science perspective.

Genomics is a powerful technology that helps us understand the Tree of Life. Biodiversity Genomics 2021 was a virtual conference that took place on 27 ^th September-1st October 2021 that demonstrated how genomics can inform conservation and food security, and can additionally help us understand evolutionary novelties such as symbiosis.

Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) conference is an annual gathering for scientists from bioinformatics, molecular biology, and data science and provides a multidisciplinary environment for disseminating recent research and development in computational biology.

The dizzying complexity of biological systems necessitates an abundance of tools that allow researchers to understand the deluge of sequence, structural, and systems-level data that is being generated in cell, molecular, and developmental biology.