Over the coming months TiBS will be publishing a series of articles that review different aspects of 'Protein Synthesis'. This series has been specially commissioned and edited by Matthias Hentze and Paul Schimmel, both longstanding members of the TiBS Editorial Board. You can find the first article, by Changan Jiang and Erin Schuman on protein synthesis in neuronal dendrites, on page XX. Below, Paul introduces the series.