Extending Asia Pacific bioinformatics into new realms in the "-omics" era

Abstract

The 2009 annual conference of the Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNet), Asia's oldest bioinformatics organisation dating back to 1998, was organized as the 8th International Conference on Bioinformatics (InCoB), Sept. 7-11, 2009 at Biopolis, Singapore. Besides bringing together scientists from the field of bioinformatics in this region, InCoB has actively engaged clinicians and researchers from the area of systems biology, to facilitate greater synergy between these two groups. InCoB2009 followed on from a series of successful annual events in Bangkok (Thailand), Penang (Malaysia), Auckland (New Zealand), Busan (South Korea), New Delhi (India), Hong Kong and Taipei (Taiwan), with InCoB2010 scheduled to be held in Tokyo, Japan, Sept. 26-28, 2010. The Workshop on Education in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (WEBCB) and symposia on Clinical Bioinformatics (CBAS), the Singapore Symposium on Computational Biology (SYMBIO) and training tutorials were scheduled prior to the scientific meeting, and provided ample opportunity for in-depth learning and special interest meetings for educators, clinicians and students. We provide a brief overview of the peer-reviewed bioinformatics manuscripts accepted for publication in this supplement, grouped into thematic areas. In order to facilitate scientific reproducibility and accountability, we have, for the first time, introduced minimum information criteria for our pubilcations, including compliance to a Minimum Information about a Bioinformatics Investigation (MIABi). As the regional research expertise in bioinformatics matures, we have delineated a minimum set of bioinformatics skills required for addressing the computational challenges of the "-omics" era.

APBioNet—Transforming Bioinformatics in the Asia-Pacific Region

“…Minimum Information About a Bioinformatics investigation (MIABi) to include basic information necessary for an in silico experiment to be repeatable and the results reproducible, as well as harmonized with community initiatives in MIBBI [3] and those of the International Society for Biocuration (ISB; http://biocurator.org), specifically BioDBcore (http://biocurator.org/biodbcore.shtml). We anticipate that the ongoing testing efforts [4]–[7] will help to delineate the process for standardization and enhance the implementation of increasingly standardized vocabularies, ontologies, and infrastructural and informational interoperability for the maintenance and sustainability of knowledge resources of ever-increasing sophistication.…”

Towards a career in bioinformatics

“…The Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNet, [ 1 ]) commenced operation in 1998, seeking to encourage scientists from diverse disciplines to work together to address questions in bioinformatics. Following on from annual meetings held in Hawaii, at the Pacific Symposium of Biocomputing (1999-2001), InCoB2002 (the International Conference on Bioinformatics, 2002) in Bangkok, Thailand was adopted as the APBioNet annual conference.…”

“…The scientific meeting featured presentations from articles accepted for peer-reviewed high-impact factor journal publications, in computational biology [ 1 ] addressing analysis pertaining to "-omics" data while this supplement features representative bioinformatics research in traditional and emerging areas. Furthermore, a case study on the impact of e-learning tools in bioinformatics education, is presented, to encourage adoption of novel teaching approaches in bioinformatics.…”

InCoB2012 Conference: from biological data to knowledge to technological breakthroughs

“…The InCoB community comprises practitioners, scientists and students spanning biology, computation, and biotechnology fields. The progress and maturation of bioinformatics in the Asia-Pacific region are documented in editorials of previous InCoB supplements in BMC Bioinformatics [5-10] and BMC Genomics Supplements [11-14]. Shortly after InCoB2012, APBioNet was incorporated in Singapore as a public limited liability company.…”