Protein Interaction Networks and Disease: Highlights of the 3rd Challenges in Computational Biology Meeting

Abstract

Cellular functions are managed by a complex network of protein interactions, the malfunction of which may derive in disease phenotypes.In spite of the incompleteness and noise present in our current protein interaction maps, computational biologists are making strenuous efforts to extract knowledge from these intricate networks and, through their integration with other types of biological data, expedite the development of novel and more effective treatments against human disorders.The 3rd Challenges in Computational Biology meeting revolved around the Protein Interaction Networks and Disease subject, bringing expert network biologists to the city of Mainz, Germany to debate the current status and limitations of protein interaction data and computational resources. This editorial outlines the meeting's background and programme, putting special emphasis on the extended abstracts of contributed talks collected in the present issue of Genomics and Computational Biology.