Preface

The development of computational tools for data analysis is becoming increasingly important in biological science. Technological advances of recent years have indeed boosted the production of enormous amounts of data of different kind, from biological sequences to expression profiles, from interaction to regulatory networks. Mining this information in a reliable way is now the real bottleneck of the discovery process.

Beginning in 2002, the RECOMB Workshop on Comparative Genomics (RECOMB-CG) has brought together scientists involved in various aspects of comparative analysis, with an emphasis on the development of mathematical and computational approaches.

This volume of the Journal of Computational Biology collects the 15 articles presented at the seventh RECOMB-CG Workshop (September 27–29, 2009, Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics, Budapest, Hungary). Three members of the program committee reviewed a total of 33 submissions from around the world and finally selected 19 articles. The articles published here represent revised and expanded versions of the original submissions. Altogether, these invited contributions report a broad range of applications of computational methods to the comparison of genomes, from the analysis of next-generation sequencing approaches, to the examination of mutations and structural rearrangements.

Keynote speakers of RECOMB-CG 2009 were as follows:

Richard Durbin (Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, UK)

Jotun Hein (Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, UK)

Laurence Hurst (Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath, UK)

Csaba Pál (Evolutionary Systems Biology Group, Biological Research Center, Szeged, Hungary)

Lisa Stubbs (Genome Biology Group, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, USA)

Jeroen Raes (EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany)

Their lectures, together with selected talks and posters, offered a broad view of the latest advances in comparative genomics.

The success of the workshop was largely due to the great selection of invited and contributed speakers and to the huge organization efforts of the Local Committee, in particular:

Péter Erdös (Rényi Institute, Budapest, Hungary)

Dezsõ Miklós (Rényi Institute, Budapest, Hungary)

Csürös Miklós (University of Montreal, Canada)

Both the steering and the program committee offered precious guidance and assistance through the entire period of the workshop organization.

The RECOMB-CG Steering committee included:

Aoife McLysaght (Trinity College, Dublin)

Jens Lagergren (Stockhom Bioinformatics Centre & KTH)

David Sankoff (University of Ottawa)

The RECOMB-CG Program Committee included:

Aaron Darling (University of Queensland, Australia)

Anne Bergeron (Universite du Quebec, Montreal, Canada)

Antonis Rokas (Vanderbilt University, USA)

Aoife McLysaght (Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland)

Avril Coghlan (Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, UK)

Bernard Moret (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland)

Cedric Chauve (Universite du Quebec, Montreal, Canada)

Chuan-Yi Tang (National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan)

Dannie Durand (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)

David Sankoff (University of Ottawa, Canada)

Eduardo Rocha (Universite Paris 6 et Institut Pasteur, France)

Emmanuelle Lerat (Universite Claude Bernard, France)

Eric Tannier (INRIA Rhone-Alpes, France)

Glenn Tesler (University of California at San Diego, USA)

Guillaume Blin (Universite Paris-Est, France)

Guillaume Bourque (Genome Institute of Singapore, Singapore)

Guillaume Fertin (Universite de Nantes, France)

Haixu Tang (Indiana University, USA)

Hugues Roest-Crollius (Ecole Normale Superieure, France)

Istvan Miklos (Renyi Institute, Hungary)

Jens Lagergren (Stockhom Bioinformatics Centre and CSC, KTH, Sweden)

Jens Stoye (Universitat Bielefeld, Germany)

Jeremy Buhler (Washington University in Saint Louis, USA)

Joao Setubal (Virginia Tech, USA)

Lars Arvestad (Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)

Laxmi Parida (New York University and IBM, USA)

Liqing Zhang (Virginia Tech, USA)

Louxin Zhang (National University of Singapore, Singapore)

Marie-France Sagot (INRIA Rhone-Alpes, France)

Mathieu Blanchette (McGill University, Canada)

Matthew Hahn (Indiana University, USA)

Nadia El-Mabrouk (Universite de Montreal, Canada)

Niklas Eriksen (Goteborg University, Sweden)

Olivier Gascuel (Universite de Montpellier II, France)

Peter Erdos (Renyi Institute, Hungary)

Pierre Pontarotti (Universite de Provence, France)

Stacia Wyman (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, USA)

Steffen Heber (North Carolina State University, USA)

Stephane Vialette (Universite Paris-Est, France)

Tiffani Williams (Texas A&M, USA)

RECOMB-CG 2009 provided a great opportunity for learning and exchanging novel ideas in the exciting field of comparative genomics. It represented the successful effort of the community to bring together leading researchers with diversified backgrounds, but with the unique interest in unraveling genes and genome evolution.