Yeasts have accompanied mankind since remote times, producing such important goods as bread, wine or beer, without being noticed as the agent of these productions. The great debate on the nature of fermentations in the XIX century made yeast unexpectedly a protagonist in a number of laboratories of the fledging biochemistry. The use of yeast as model organism and testbed has been steady and the complete sequencing of its genome, the first one of an eukaryotic organism, increased even more its value. 

Basic studies using yeasts in such different fields as the regulation of the cell cycle, membrane assembly, protein secretion or vesicular transport have provided knowledge currently used both in fundamental research and in medical practice. The fact that in this century several Nobel Prizes have been awarded to researchers using yeast as their working system is another testimony to the scientific value of these organisms. 

The Symposium “Yeasts: at the cross-roads of Systems biology and Biomedicine” aims to offer a panoramic vision of the growing breadth of yeast research, particularly its continued expansion as a model system in different areas of the life sciences. Systems biology, using the advantages of current technologies, has expanded previous research that tried to understand the physiology of organisms using a reductionist approach. It should not be forgotten, however, that this approach was necessary to attain the current knowledge and is still appropriate in many fields. The use of yeasts as tools to study problems in Biomedicine is clearly illustrated in this Symposium.

We present this Symposium also as a homage to the memory of Professor Julio Rodríguez Villanueva (1928-2017), an extraordinary personality who stimulated the development of microbiology in Spain and who used widely yeasts as a material of study and an experimental system. Several symposia on yeasts sponsored in the past by the Fundación Ramón Areces have a debt of gratitude to his enthusiastic support. Besides his achievements in research, his services to the scientific community in different places -university, scientific societies and committees- make him a prominent figure among the founders of modern Biology in Spain. The last session of the Symposium will be dedicated to evoke different aspects of his work and impact. 

The generosity of the Fundación Ramón Areces has allowed, again, to assemble an international group of productive scientists who use yeasts as an experimental organism in different research areas. The organizers thank this help made explicit from the very initial steps of the application for support. The enthusiastic responses of the speakers that have made possible a symposium of high scientific level are also gratefully acknowledged. 

The organizers believe that a solid basic science is at the roots of innovation, and that the great emphasis demanding immediate translational results, observed with increasing frequency, may slow down the generation of important knowledge, necessary to tackle the acute problems faced by our societies. We hope that the Symposium will attract an important number of interested scientists, using yeasts as biological material, and will highlight the great value of basic research.