RECOMB’99: Research in Computational Biology

by Mireille Régnier

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RECOMB99, the Third International Conference on Computational Biology, was held in Lyon, from April 11th to April 14th. The two previous conferences were held in the US: Santa Fe in 1997 and New York in 1998. The 4th one is scheduled in April 2000 in Tokyo (Japan).

Among the 320 people that attended the conference, 183 were European, 111. One should note an increased interest from companies, as we had 70 non-academic attendants.

Program Committee selected 35 papers out of 147 submissions. Among the new subjects discussed at RECOMB99, let us cite the regulation mechanisms in gene expression, and notably metabolic pathways. Protein geometry and drug design were also extensively studied.

Stanislas Ulam Computational Biology Address was given by Piotr Slonimski, Director of French Center for Molecular Genetic at Gif-Yvette. Using software developed by new company Gene-It, P. Slonimski presented unexpected and outstanding results on evolution.

Among other invited conferences, Distinguished New Technologies Lecture was delivered by Ed Southern (Oxford University, England) on Large DNA Microarrays. Finally, Trends in Computational Biology were presented by John Wooley. He pointed out the now unavoidable contribution of computer science for the interpretation and classification of biological data.

Please contact:

Mireille Régnier - INRIA
Tel: +33 1 39 63 54 78
E-mail: Mireille.Regnier@inria.fr