A report from the second Nematostella vectensis research conference.

This report summarizes information discussed at the second Nematostella vectensis research conference, which took place on August 27, 2012 in Boston, MA, USA. The startlet sea anemone Nematostella is emerging as one of leading model organisms among cnidarians, in part because of the extensive genome and transcriptome resources that are becoming available for Nematostella, which were the focus of several presentations. In addition, research was presented on the use of Nematostella in developmental, regeneration, signal transduction, host-symbiont, and gene-environment interaction studies.