The 9th International Marine Biotechnology Conference (http://www.imbc2010.org/) will be held from October 8–12, 2010 in Qingdao, China. The series IMBCs is the primary conference on marine biotechnology under the auspices of International Marine Biotechnology Association.

Marine Biotechnology explores and utilizes marine bioresources. Traditional marine biotechnology mainly includes fishery technology, marine cultivation, marine algal chemistry, and functional foods. It is important to mention that modern marine biotechnology is now undergoing rapid development since about 1980 with exciting achievements in biochemistry, genetics, genomics, aquaculture, bioenergy, and other related fields, beginning with genetic recombinant technology as applied to marine algae. No doubt that marine biotechnology also incorporates enormous social and economic benefits. Moreover, marine biotechnology provides a foundation for establishing the ocean farming industry. This in turn could supply enough technological support for international efforts that will exploit marine bioresources, in order to synthesize proteins, drugs, and other bioproducts with special functions. In the domains of marine science and technology, marine biotechnology is relatively young, but it reveals unbelievably vigorous and powerful applications. This clearly indicates that marine biotechnology is now leading certain trends from genomics to marine aquaculture and from genomic engineering to ocean farming. For more specific health benefits to humans, applicable pharmaceuticals are likely to emerge as more natural products are shown to be effective. They will do so especially when evidence-based approaches are applied to rigorous analyses that can be extended to in vitro systems and select animals models in basic biomedical research laboratories. Lastly, marine biotechnology is one of the fruits of bioprospecting.

We invite both the participants of IMBC 2010 as well as other authors working on marine biotechnology to contribute (1) original research articles; (2) review articles that are related to but not limited to the nine topics listed below. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Algal biotechnology
• Marine microbiology
• Marine drugs
• Genomics, proteomics and metabolomics in marine biotechnology
• Marine bioactive compounds
• Marine bioproducts
• Biomaterials and nanobiotechnology
• Biomineralization, biomineral, and biomarker
• Oceans and human health
• Drug discovery
• Biotechnology and development
• Pharmacologic mechanisms

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: