Biologists

The Company of Biologists is a non-profit organisation (charity registration # 277992), whose sole purpose is to promote research and the knowledge and study of biology by financing four journals (The Journal of Experimental Biology, Development, Journal of Cell Science, and Disease Models & Mechanisms), as well as providing travelling fellowships for junior scientists and grants to societies, meeting organisers, etc. The Company was established in 1925 in order to make a success of the new periodical The British Journal of Experimental Biology. This periodical soon evolved into The Journal of Experimental Biology (JEB), which is now the leading primary research journal in the field of integrative and comparative animal physiology and publishes papers on the form and function of living organisms at all levels of biological organisation. The JEB Symposia were launched in 1978 at the suggestion of the then Editor-in-Chief John Treherne. Their aim was, and still is, to review knowledge and stimulate further research in an expanding topic of experimental biology and to bring together scientists from different areas to encourage cross-fertilization of techniques and knowledge across specialization boundaries. Since the first symposium on 'Cellular oscillators', the annual JEB symposia have covered a diverse array of topics within experimental biology, highlighting the relevance and power of the comparative approach to mainstream physiology. In order that the proceedings of each symposium are made available to biologists as soon as possible, speakers are invited to contribute a review article to a 'special issue' of the journal. These special issues are freely available on the JEB website from the time of publication.