At least ten scientists, engineers and medical researchers will receive seed grants of up to US$100,000 each from the US National Academy of Sciences to explore issues surrounding the emerging field of synthetic biology (see page 684). Only those who attended a 19–22 November synthetic-biology conference run by the academy in Irvine, California, are eligible to apply. The meeting was organized in conjunction with the W. M. Keck Foundation, which is funding the grants. Recipients will be announced in April 2010. Conference participants worked on developing a common understanding of goals, exploring tools to facilitate engineering biology, and identifying applications for the field.