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Each session has a chair who is responsible for organizing submissions. Please contact the specific session chair relevant to your interests for further information. Links on each of the session titles below lead to more detailed calls for participation for each session.
Cochairs: Inna Dubchak, Lior Pachter, Liping Wei
The sequencing of over 800 complete genomes presents unprecedented opportunities for biological discovery as well as new technical challenges for the computational sciences. This session calls for papers on novel computational algorithms and biological applications in genome-wide analysis and comparative genomics. The session will bring together researchers from the biological, computational and mathematical fields with the goal of sharing new research ideas and achieving a better understanding of the current issues and challenges.
Contact:
Inna Dubchak
ildubchak@lbl.gov
(510)495-2419
Co-chairs: Peter Karp, Eric Neumann, Pedro Romero
This session is intended to be a continuing forum for addressing the advances and needs of computational tools for modeling and managing genomic, pathway and interaction information, including metabolic pathways, signal-transduction pathways, genetic regulatory circuits, protein-protein interactions, and other types of biological interactions.
Contact:
Pedro Romero
promero@AI.SRI.COM
(650) 859-5669
Chair: Willi von der Lieth
Carbohydrates contain a higher information density than the other classes of important biological macromolecules. The biological functions of carbohydrates are still not completely understood. However, it is clear that glycans are fundamental to many biological processes including fertilization, immune defense, viral replications, parasitic infection, cell growth, cell-cell adhesion and inflammation. The session intends to summarize new biocomputing approaches aiming at a better understanding of the biological functions of complex carbohydrate.
Contact:
Willi von der Lieth
W.vonderLieth@DKFZ-Heidelberg.de
Tel: +49-6221-424541
Co-chairs: Lynette Hirschman, Jong C. Park, Junichi Tsujii, Limsoon Wong, Cathy Wu
This session will explore techniques and applications of natural language processing to the extraction of biological information from free text and other relevant biology sources. In particular, we are interested in:
Co-chairs: Isaac Kohane, Clay Stephens, Julie Schneider, Francisco De La Vega
The recent completion of the first assembly of the human genome has provided an invaluable tool for investigating the biology of our species. Several academic and industrial laboratories are working to add value to this raw genome sequence by generating DNA variation and gene expression data. However, researchers are encountering substantial challenges regarding the management, annotation and analysis of this information. Many of the critical issues involved in linking genetic variation to clinical phenotypes are complicated by a need to synthesize biological and computational expertise. For example, there is a need to apply and extend population genetic analyses to high-throughput data to elucidate underlying patterns of variation in the human genome. When operating at a high- throughput mode, extensive software architectures are needed, and quality control of the data is essential. Current approaches for molecular profiling call for the combined use of genetics and functional genomics data. New and improved algorithms for class discovery and prediction within the combined data sets are needed. Furthermore, disparate academic and industrial databases must be integrated in order to connect genomic and clinical information; yet is unclear that the underlying ontologies used in these repositories lead to easy interoperation. However, the rewards for overcoming these challenges will be considerable, including an improved understanding of genetic disease and the entire range of normal phenotypic variation and individual differences in drug response. The session "Human Genomic Variation: Disease, drug response and clinical phenotypes" will provide a forum for biologists and computer scientists working in academics, government and industry to discuss and develop new approaches to use high throughput genetic variation and expression data to inform scientific and clinical studies.
Contact:
Francisco M. De La Vega, Ph.D.
delavefm@appliedbiosystems.com
(650) 638-6989
Co-chairs: Scott Stanley and Benjamin Salisbury
This session will explore the natural partnership between the co-evolving disciplines of phylogenetics and genomics. The analysis of genome structure and function depends on phylogenetics set it in the full context of evolutionary history and process. Phylogenetic systematics increasingly draws upon genomics, both as a vast source of informative data and as subject matter.
Contact:
Scott Stanley
s.stanley@genaissance.com
(203) 786-3537
Co-chairs: Peter Clote, Gavin Naylor, Eugene Shakhnovich, and Ziheng Yang
This session is concerned with aspects of protein structure, function and evolution, where techniques employed may include investigations of energy landscapes, folding algorithms, statistical approaches to fold or class recognition, evolutionary genomics for determining more biologically reasonable position-dependent amino acid substitution matrices which reflect coevolutionary patterns in amino acid sequences, etc.
Contact:
Peter Clote
clote@bc.edu
(617) 552-1332