The MECC provides a convenient, inexpensive, and invaluable forum for scientific exchange and collegial interactions among researchers working at the forefront of enzymology and its interface with biomedical and pharmaceutical science. This one-day conference is held annually in the Chicago area. The MECC attracts academic and industrial researchers from over a dozen states in the Midwest, ranging from Minnesota to Texas and Kentucky to Kansas. Posters are welcomed from all participants, but not obligatory. Oral presentations, selected from the submitted abstracts, feature graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and a few faculty (mostly assistant professors) from the region.