The Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) will host an international group of scientists for a research symposium on Wednesday, April 26 to Saturday, April 29 at the VBI Conference Center on the Virginia Tech campus. The "International Symposium on the Comparative Biology of the Alpha-Proteobacteria" will examine the very latest research and findings on the alpha-proteobacteria, a group of diverse organisms whose members have successfully adopted different lifestyle and energy-yielding strategies in the course of evolution