Concettina Guerra – författare

This volume contains the papers presented at the 10th Annual International Conference on Research in Computational Molecular Biology (RECOMB 2006), which was held in Venice, Italy, on April 2-5, 2006. The RECOMB conference serieswasstartedin1997bySorinIstrail,PavelPevznerandMichaelWaterman. The table on p. VIII summarizes the history of the meetings. RECOMB 2006 was hosted by the University of Padova at the Cinema Palace of the Venice Convention Center, Venice Lido, Italy. It was organized by a committee chaired by Concettina Guerra. A special 10th Anniversary Program Committee was formed, by including the members of the Steering Committee and inviting all Chairs of past editions. The Program Committee consisted of the 38 members whose names are listed on a separate page. From212submissionsofhighquality,40paperswereselectedforpresentation atthemeeting,andtheyappearintheseproceedings.Theselectionwasbasedon reviewsandevaluationsproducedbytheProgramCommitteemembersaswellas byexternalreviewers,andonasubsequentWeb-basedPCopenforum.Following thedecisionmadein2005bytheSteeringCommittee,RECOMBProceedingsare published as a volume of Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics (LNBI), which is - editedbythefoundersofRECOMB.Traditionally,theJournalofComputational Biology devotes a special issue to the publication of archival versions of selected conference papers. RECOMB 2006 featured seven keynote addresses by as many invited spe- ers: Anne-Claude Gavin (EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany), David Haussler (U- versity of California, Santa Cruz, USA), Ajay K. Royyuru (IBM T.J. Watson ResearchCenter, USA), David Sanko? (University of Ottawa,Canada), Michael S. Waterman (University of Southern California, USA), Carl Zimmer (Science Writer, USA), Roman A. Zubarev (Uppsala University, Sweden). The Stanislaw Ulam Memorial Computational BiologyLecture was given by Michael S. Wat- man. A special feature presentation was devoted to the 10th anniversary and is included in this volume.

The papers collected in this volume reproduce contributions by leading sch- arstoaninternationalschoolandworkshopwhichwasorganizedandheldwith thegoaloftakinga snapshotofadiscipline undertumultuous growth. Indeed, the area of protein folding, docking and alignment is developing in response to needs for a mix of heterogeneous expertise spanning biology, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, and statistics, among others. Some of the problems encountered in this area are not only important for the scienti?c challenges they pose, but also for the opportunities they disclose intermsofmedicalandindustrialexploitation. Atypicalexampleiso?eredby protein-drug interaction (docking), a problem posing daunting computational problems at the crossroads of geometry, physics and chemistry, and, at the same time, a problem with unimaginable implications for the pharmacopoeia of the future. The schoolfocused on problems posed by the study of the mechanisms - hind protein folding, and explored di?erent ways of attacking these problems under objective evaluations of the methods. Together with a relatively small core of consolidated knowledge and tools, important re?ections were brought to this e?ort by studies in a multitude of directions and approaches. It is obviously impossible to predict which, if any, among these techniques will prove completely successful, but it is precisely the implicit dialectic among them that best conveys the current ?avor of the ?eld. Such unique diversity and richness inspired the format of the meeting, and also explains the slight departure of the present volume from the typical format in this series: the exposition of the current sediment is complemented here by a selection of quali?ed specialized contributions.