[[[ APOLOGIES FOR MULTIPLE POSTINGS ]]] Dear Colleagues, We would like to kindly remind you of the early registration deadline for ECCB10: August 20, 2010. Don't miss it, so that you get the best registration rate. As you probably know, this year's European Conference on Computational Biology will act as the yearly Benelux Bioinformatics Conference. It is a unique opportunity to show internationally how active our bioinformatics community is, and for all research teams to put their work in the spotlight. The Benelux Bioinformatics Conference has always attracted numerous researchers from our bioinformatics community. We have had 215 paper submissions - the largest number so far for ECCB. From those submissions, 36 contributions have been selected for oral presentation, which guarantees a high-quality scientific program. We have also been able to accept 392 abstracts for poster presentation, with more than 100 of them from Benelux participants. ECCB10 will be a major scientific event happening "next door" - a not-to-be-missed opportunity! A call for late-breaking posters will open up in the next few days, so that there will be one last chance to present your work. Looking forward to meeting you in September, Yves Moreau - ECCB10 Conference Chair for the ECCB10 Local Organizing Committee === Apologies for multiple postings - Please distribute widely within your lab === Dear Colleague, This is a friendly reminder that the early registration deadline for ECCB10 is quickly approaching: Friday, August 20, 2010. Register before the deadline to benefit from the best registration rate. This year, we had a record number of 216 manuscript submissions, 36 of which were accepted for oral presentation, and we could also accept 392 abstracts for poster presentation, so that we look forward to an exciting scientific meeting. For more details and registration: www.eccb10.org www.eccb10.org/index.php/registration * Do not forget to register also for the workshops and tutorials that will take place on Sunday, September 26. This is a unique opportunity to focus on one of several key emerging topics under the guidance of scientific leaders in the field. You will find the list of workshops and tutorials below. * For students, the ISCB European Student Council Symposium will also take place on Sunday, September 26 and offer a unique opportunity for students to present their work to an international audience. * We also encourage you to participate to the conference banquet, which will take place in the magnificent city of Bruges, at the historic site of Old Saint John (originally a medieval hospital) - http://www.eccb10.org/index.php/eccb10info/social-event Finally, we recommend that you book your accommodation as early as possible. (The multiple international events related to Belgium's presidency of the European Union means that accommodation could become tight.) Best wishes, The ECCB10 Organizing Committee ============================ TUTORIALS * TUTORIAL 1: WORKING WITH NEXT-GENERATION SEQUENCING DATA In recent years, there has been a revolution in the area of DNA sequencing with the arrival of next-generation sequencing technologies. The type and volume of the data produced by next-generation sequencing machines presents many previously unseen informatics challenges. This tutorial will help people who are getting started on next-gen sequencing get an idea of the tools, flows, and procedures that they may need to set up to handle this data. In this short course, we will introduce the participants to the different next-generation sequencing technologies, show how to do some basic quality checking of the data, how to run the various next-generation alignment tools, create de novo sequence assemblies, and call variants (such as SNPs, short indels, and structural variants) from a reference sequence. * TUTORIAL 2: USE OF SEMANTIC WEB RESOURCES IN COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY AND BIOINFORMATICS The Semantic Web is a set of technologies, or a framework, which is designed to make data integration possible via the web, with the addition of a precise semantic characterization of entities and relations (ontologies). As data integration is a pre-requisite for systems biology and translational research, the Semantic Web can bring relevant benefits in these areas. The aim of this tutorial is to briefly introduce the key basic principles needed to understand what it means to represent information on the Semantic Web, and then to provide the attendees with basic hands on competences to start using biomedical information resources which are now available on this framework. * TUTORIAL 3: CURRENT METHODS AND APPLICATIONS FOR REGULATORY SEQUENCE ANALYSIS The annotation of the non-coding genome with gene regulatory function is lagging far behind the annotation of protein-coding genes and improved annotation will depend both on deeper biological insight into cis-regulatory logic and on more efficient computational prediction algorithms. Recent data obtained by high-throughput experiments accelerate the genome-wide identification of regulatory elements but also provide additional bioinformatics challenges. In the light of these developments, this tutorial will focus on bioinformatics methods to predict cis-regulatory elements and to aid the process of regulatory annotation. Participants will be provided with an overview of existing resources (databases, tools) and methods for detecting cis-regulatory elements in genome sequences, and generate testable hypotheses about the binding specificity of transcription factors (motifs discovery), their precise binding locations (binding site prediction), and their target genes (target identification), and go towards regulatory networks. * TUTORIAL 4: PROTEIN STRUCTURE VALIDATION Recent advances in homology modelling and drug design have made clear that the quality of protein structures is really imnportant for good results. Today's software and CPU time availability on clusters, super computers, and the grid allow for easy improvement of old files. It is therefore important for all protein structure bioinformaticians to be able to evaluate the quality of the structures used in their studies and to know when it might be beneficial to ask an NMR spectroscopist or X-ray crystallographer to help bring an old file up to today's standards. This workshop will teach the participants how to use a series of protein structure validation tools and how to interpret the results. The origins of problems are discussed as well as their importance for follow up studies. SYMPOSIUM AND WORKSHOPS * ISCB EUROPEAN STUDENT COUNCIL SYMPOSIUM The ISCB Student Council and its European Regional Student Groups are organizing the first European Student Council Symposium to be held on Sunday, September 26th, the Tutorials/Workshop Day of ECCB 2010 in Ghent, Belgium. The European Student Council Symposium is a forum for students and young researchers in the fields of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. Participants will have the opportunity to present their work to an international audience, build a network within the computational biology community and develop important soft skills in an environment that fosters exchange of ideas and knowledge. * WORKSHOP 1: LEARNING FROM PERTURBATION EFFECTS Reverse engineering of biological networks is a key for the understanding of biological systems and for identifying new drug targets. Perturbation techniques, like target specific inhibitors and RNA interference, open tremendous possibilities to detect so far unknown interdependencies from, possibly multidimensional, effects. At the same time computational methods being able to derive network hypotheses from such complex data play a crucial role. This workshop aims to bring together computational scientists working with various approaches for this challenging task. The goal is to give an overview over different computational methods in the field and to strengthen and initiate new cooperations. * WORKSHOP 2: ANNOTATION, INTERPRETATION, AND MANAGEMENT OF MUTATIONS (AIMM) This workshop will showcase the state of the art in extraction and reuse of genotype-phenotype information. Annotation of mutations with their impact on phenotypic expression is crucial to understanding genetic mechanisms involved in phenotypic processes and ultimately in complex diseases. Managing this knowledge is key to generating novel hypotheses. Despite the existence of literature and databases describing impacts of mutations, association studies fail to deliver linkage to phenotypes which is the most important contemporary research interest. Extraction of such information from scientific literature is a promising research field and existing solutions are ready to be deployed as services and as semantic web services. ============================ ABOUT ECCB10 The European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB10) will be held on September 26-29, 2010 in Ghent, Belgium. www.eccb10.org ECCB10 is the key European computational biology event in 2010 uniting scientists working in a broad range of disciplines, including bioinformatics, computational biology, medicine, biology, and systems biology. This year we had a record number of 216 manuscript submissions, of which 36 were accepted for oral presentation. We have been able to accept 392 posters for presentation during the two poster sessions of Monday, September 27 and Tuesday, September 28. We are looking forward to a fruitful scientific meeting. Ghent is centrally located in Western Europe and is reachable by car within a day of travel from most cities in The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, France, and the UK. It is also easily reachable by high-speed train since Belgium is a hub of the European high-speed rail networks (Thalys, Eurostar, TGV, and ICE). Ghent is one of Europe's most exciting medieval settings, a glorious eclectic city with spectacular buildings and a vivid cultural experience (National Geographic Traveler recently ranked it 3rd best historic place to visit internationally). Ghent is directly accessible by train from Brussels airport. The conference venue is highly convenient and located in a beautiful park within the city center. We kindly request that you forward this announcement to the members of your team. We look forward to welcoming you to Ghent. The ECCB10 Organizing Committee www.eccb10.org UNSUBSCRIBE - If you do not wish to receive further announcements for ECCB10, please reply to info@eccb10.org with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject heading.