This conference on The Biology and Chemistry of Vision is part of an important series of meetings convened to promote interactions between the top investigators in the field on topics at the forefront of research on photoreceptors and the retina of the eye. This particular conference will focus on interactions between work on the basic biological mechanisms of photoreception in the eye and the clinical problems related to retinal degeneration. The conference will lead to new understanding of how the proteins involved in the biochemistry of vision can be defective, and how those defects can lead to visual disability. The impact will be on both basic and applied aspects of visual neuroscience, and the conference will promote interactions that are likely to have an impact on neuroscience in general.