SynBERC, Life Technologies and other SynBERC Industrial Partners have tentatively planned a workshop on Yeast Synthetic Biology Tools. The workshop, tentatively scheduled for November 14 at UCSF’s Mission Bay Campus, arose from conversations among several SynBERC and IAB members over the past several months around a common interest in yeast synthetic biology tools development and application. The opportunity is based upon the fact that yeast is re-emerging as an important workhorse system in synthetic biology research-development-production processes, in particular for chemical production and biofuels applications. While many tools and technologies exist in yeast from basic research and applied development, there are opportunities to adapt existing tools, and to develop and standardize new tools to better meet the needs of scale, complexity and engineering in synthetic biology. As envisioned, the workshop will center around three themes: genome engineering, approaches and tools; engineering metabolic and regulatory pathways; and fermentation, process development and production. The full details will be announced shortly. For more information, please contact Leonard Katz (katzl@berkeley.edu).