Call for Papers and Posters

Mutational Signatures

Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing Session

January 3-7, 2020

The Big Island of Hawaii, U.S.A.

Motivation

Mutations are the ultimate source of genetic diversity within and across species, and the main drivers of evolution and the cause of many diseases. They are thought to arise from a combination of errors in DNA replication (e.g., the chance misincorporation of a base pair) or damage that is unrepaired (e.g., the spontaneous deamination of methylated CpG sites). Understanding the rate and mechanisms by which mutations occur is of paramount importance for studies of medical genetics and evolutionary biology. Various mutagenic processes often produce characteristic mutational patterns called mutational signatures. Recent advances in sequencing have now made it possible to generate large datasets to study mutational processes across individuals and species. For the first time, these datasets enabled researchers to search for patterns of somatic mutations across thousands of tumors and link them to genomic properties and molecular phenotypes.

Session Topics

We invite contributions in a broad range of computational topics related to computational modelling and analyzing of mutagenic processes and their relationship with cancer phenotype and evolution.

Examples of topics within the scope of this session include but are not limited to:

● Methods to infer mutational signatures in cancer such as topic modeling and matrix factorization techniques

● Approaches for identifying signatures of copy number changes or structural variations

● Inferring signatures integrated across multiple classes of mutations (e.g. single base substitutions and indels)

● Properties of mutational signatures (e.g. relation to chromatin structure, epigenetic markers, etc)

● Modeling of mutagenic processes in both cancer and healthy populations

● Relation between mutational signatures and cancer drivers, gene expression, and patient phenotypes or outcomes

● Somatic mutations and immune response

● Mutational signatures and cancer evolution

Session Organizers

Max Leiserson, University of Maryland (contact: mdml@cs.umd.edu)

Teresa M. Przytycka, NIH

Roded Sharan, Tel Aviv University

Submission Information

The submitted papers are fully reviewed and accepted on a competitive basis.

Important Dates

Paper submissions due: August 5, 2019 (no extensions will be granted)

Notification of paper acceptance: September 13, 2019

Camera-ready final paper deadline: October 1, 2019

Deadline for poster abstract submission: November 15, 2019

Paper Format and Submission Portal

Please see the PSB paper format template and instructions at http://psb.stanford.edu/psb-online/psb-submit.

Paper Submissions

Unlike the abstracts at most biology conferences, papers in the PSB proceedings are archival, rigorously peer-reviewed publications. PSB publications are Open Access and linked directly from MEDLINE/PubMed and Google Scholar for wide accessibility. They should be thought of as short journal articles that may be cited on CVs and grant reports.

Poster Format and Submission Portal

Poster presenters will be provided with an easel and a poster board 32"W x 40"H (80x100cm). One poster from each paid participant is permitted. See the submission portal web site for the instructions regarding poster submissions.

Last updated: April 1, 2019