Institute for Systems Biology to Host Fourth International Symposium; 2005 Event to Address Significant Challenges in Computational Biology

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 14, 2005--The Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) will hold its fourth annual international symposium on Sunday, April 24th and Monday, April 25th at the ISB research facility in Seattle, Washington. This year's symposium will address the significant computational challenges in systems biology.

Systems biology is a new field and is continually changing. These changes pose new computational challenges on an unprecedented scale. For example, it is predicted that within 10 to 15 years, we will be able to sequence individual human genomes for less than a $1000 each in less than a day. In North America alone, that translates to nearly half a billion human genomes which we will want to store and cross-link to medical records, and to analyze for susceptibility to diseases and responsiveness to medical interventions.

The availability of large numbers of genome sequences also opens opportunities for decoding the information embedded in DNA: what is transcribed, under what conditions, and by how much? Such an endeavor will require comparisons of hundreds, possibly thousands, of genomes within and across species. It will also necessitate the integration of genomic data with large-scale expression, localization, and interaction data. The rate at which new types of data and larger data sets are being generated far exceeds the rate at which we are able to analyze and exploit these data, and the challenge is growing daily.

These challenges are only the beginning: understanding the dynamic behavior of evolved systems demands new paradigms in model analysis and data visualization. How can we abstract from a system of thousands of interacting molecular species the underlying operational principles? Analogous to engineering design principles, we need to understand the functional and dynamic organizational principles of biomolecular networks. But, given the natural variability within cells over time, between cells within a tissue, and between individuals, how can we distinguish cause from effect, and essential from background/context?

These and other challenges will be addressed at the symposium by a distinguished group of scientists, all experts in the field of computational biology. The Institute is anticipating approximately 250 attendees at the symposium and will begin at 4:00 pm on Sunday, April 24th with a keynote address from Nathan Myhrvold, Founder of Intellectual Ventures, LLC.

Other featured speakers include (in alphabetical order):

Viktors Berstis   Senior Software Engineer, IBM Global Services

Rich Bonneau      Senior Research Scientist, Institute for Systems  
                  Biology

David Eisenberg   Director, UCLA-DOE Lab of Biological Structure & 
                  Molecular Medicine, University of California Los 
                  Angeles

Terry 
 Gaasterland      Professor of Computational Biology and Director, 
                  Scripps Genome Center, Scripps Institution of 
                  Oceanography, University of California, San Diego

Mark Gerstein     Albert L. Williams Associate Professor of 
                  Biomedical Informatics, Molecular 
                  Biophysics/Biochemistry, and Computer Science, 
                  Yale University

Trey Ideker       Assistant Professor, Bioengineering, University of 
                  California San Diego

Richard Karp      Senior Research Scientist, International Computer 
                  Science Institute

Joe Nadeau        Co-director, Center for Computational Genomics, 
                  Case Western Reserve University

Bernhard Palsson  Professor of Bioengineering and Adjunct Professor 
                  of Medicine, University of California San Diego

Mike Tyers        Senior Investigator, The Samuel Lunenfeld Research 
                  Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital

TIME:             Sunday, April 24, 2005   4:00 - 6:30 p.m. (PDT)
                  Monday, April 25, 2005   8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (PDT)

VENUE:            Institute for Systems Biology, 1441 N. 34th St., 
                  Seattle, WA

REGISTRATION:     www.systemsbiology.org (click on symposium icon)

MEDIA CONTACT:    Gretchen Sorensen
                  Senior Director, External Affairs & Development
                  206-732-1239
                  gsorensen@systemsbiology.org