Distributed computing systems have become pivotal in the analysis of bioinformatics data, especially for the investigation of complex biological problems that require intense computational workloads. The usage of distributed computing systems like Apache Spark, in fact, might allow scientific discoveries on bioinformatics data that otherwise would be impossible if the analyses were performed on personal computers.
Our special session on "Distributed computing in bioinformatics and computational biology" aims at calling for researchers able to show the potential and the advance of distributed computing resources to make accurate computational analyses in biological datasets.
With this special session, we would like to gather scientific contributions aimed at optimizing the usage of distributed computing systems and resources in any bioinformatics, genomics, and proteomics context. The results presented in these studies would be useful and helpful both for the distributed computing experts and for inexperienced users approaching this subject for the first time.

Topics of interest include:

• - Distributed computing systems in genomics and proteomics

• - Bioinformatics projects enhanced by distributed computing platforms

• - Optimisation of distributed computing systems

• - Application of machine learning methods to bioinformatics datasets enhanced through distributed computing

• - Protocols for efficient usage of distributed computing systems