This proposal is for the support of an international conference on the biology of the mineralized connective tissues to be held on the campus of the Northwestern University Dental School in the late Fall of 1980. We seek to hold a 4-day conference where an international group of experts will lecture, supplemented by a number of shorter papers or poster presentations. A major amount of open discussion time will be preserved. The conference proceedings will be published. The purpose is two-fold. First, there has not been a conference directed to the question of the mineralization of bone and dentin since the New York Academy of Science sponsored meeting at Pacific Palisades in March 1967. Since then, there have been major advances in a number of related areas, which have enabled much greater insight into the processes of calcification. New techniques in the culture of bone and dentin can lead to data of an entirely different nature than that heretofore available. The time is ripe to develop new study approaches. Second, we wish to hold this conference in celebration of the opening of a new Department of Oral Biology at the Dental School, a department in which one of the major research thrusts will be in the study of mineralization.