While a pandemic has brought world travel to a near halt, the international scientific community has shown remarkable resilience in our ability to connect with one another virtually and share research updates at international conferences.

The 4^thInternational Conference on Plant Synthetic Biology, Bioengineering and Biotechnology was held virtually from 29 October to 1 November and attracted top speakers leading research in the re-engineering of photosynthesis, metabolic engineering, carbon dioxide capture, genome-scale engineering, engineering of microcompartments and bioproduction in plants, among others. In 2019, it had been held in Cambridge, United Kingdom. The virtual conference featured pre-recorded presentations which were made available at scheduled times, as well as live Q&A session with the presenters for each session which allowed them to respond to live questions from the virtual audience. Additionally, there were virtual networking opportunities where participants had the opportunity to socialize with other attendees.

Dr Steven Hussey, a P-rated researcher in the Forest Molecular Genetics (FMG) Programme, presented his work entitled “Synthetic biology approaches for reconstructing transcriptional networks in Eucalyptus and re-engineering woody biomass”. Much of his talk featured the design, fabrication and application of a Eucalyptus synthetic transcription factor and promoter panel for transcriptional network inference and bioengineering, which is also featured on the FABI website. Dr Raphael Ployet is a postdoctoral researcher in FMG who also attended the conference virtually and co-authored the presentation.