International Symposium for Frontier of Bioinformatics

The International Symposium for Frontier of Bioinformatics took place on April 16 at Kuramae Hall on Tokyo Tech's Ookayama Campus.

Associate Professor Takuji Yamada

Bioinformatics involves computer analysis of the tremendous amounts of biological data essential for research in the life sciences. Enormous amounts of next-generation sequencing (NGS)¹ and other omics data² are being accumulated on a daily basis, and analytical techniques are improving with astonishing rapidity; and as large-scale data production continues to expand, bioinformatics becomes increasingly important in organizing and analyzing it.

• Note 1:
  Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is an innovative gene analyzing technology developed in the 21st century that makes it possible for researchers to read and analyze genic information from DNA.
• Note 2:
  Omics data is information accumulated in fields of biology whose names end in omics. It includes a wide range of primary and secondary genic information.

Jointly organized by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBO), the Japanese Society for Bioinformatics (JSBi) and the Database Center for Life Science (DBCLS), the symposium featured presentations in English on front-line large-scale data analysis by eight outstanding researchers engaged in bioinformatics both at home and abroad.

• Construction of metabolic pathway database for human gut microbiome
  Takuji Yamada (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan)

• Medical data and text mining: Linking diseases, drugs, and adverse reactions
  Lars Juhl Jensen (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

• KEGG for Functional Annotation of Metagenomes
  Susumu Goto (Kyoto University, Japan)

• Metagenomic analysis of the human gut microbiome and beyond
  Peer Bork (EMBL, Germany)

• Understanding genomic features from their structural aspects
  Mikita Suyama (Kyushu University, Japan)

• Determining the ciliome and its modules from genomics data
  Martijn Huijnen (Radboud University Medical Centre, Netherlands)

• Genetics and pharmacogenetics in epilepsy - a bioinformatics perspective
  Roland Krause (University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg)

• Function and evolution of post-translational modifications
  Vera van Noort (KU Leuven, Belgium)

• Protein abundance evolution and its systems-level constraints
  Christian von Mering (University Zurich, Switzerland)

Dr. Peer Bork

Dr. Martijn Huijnen

Attracting more than 110 faculty members and students from Tokyo Tech and other universities as well as academic and corporate researchers from both Japan and overseas, the symposium was a great success. Presentations given on the most advanced studies in and the future of bioinformatics were very lively, and participants had many questions for the presenters.

From the following day, the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University hosted a one-week practical bioinformatics training program. Staff from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory provided very meaningful lectures to students and young researchers from all around the world.

• International Symposium For Frontier Of Bioinformatics
• EMBO
• Japanese Society for Bioinformatics
• Database Center for Life Science