1. Special issue on data management in bioinformatics, Pages 241-242, Mohammed J. Zaki and Jason T. L. Wang

2. Cancer classification using gene expression data, Pages 243-268, Ying Lu and Jiawei Han

3. Mooshka: a system for the management of multidimensional gene expression data in situ, Pages 269-285, Andrei Pisarev, Ekaterina Poustelnikova, Maria Samsonova and Peter Baumann

4. Genomic data modeling, Pages 287-310, Jake Yue Chen and John V. Carlis

5. Design and implementation of a string database query language, Pages 311-337, Gosta Grahne, Raul Hakli, Matti Nyknen, Hellis Tamm and Esko Ukkonen

6. Information technology challenges of biodiversity and ecosystems informatics,, Pages 339-345, John L. Schnase, Judy Cushing, Mike Frame, Anne Frondorf, Eric Landis, David Maier and Avi Silberschatz

7. The building of BODHI, a bio-diversity database system, Pages 347-367, Srikanta J. Bedathur, Jayant R. Haritsa and Uday S. Sen

Bioinformatics is the science of storing, extracting, organizing, analyzing, interpreting, and utilizing information from biological sequences and molecules.  It has been mainly fueled by advances in DNA sequencing and genome mapping techniques. The Human Genome Project has resulted in rapidly growing databases of genetic sequences. New techniques are needed to analyze, manage and discover sequence, structure and functional patterns or models from these large sequence and structural databases. High performance data analysis algorithms are also becoming central to this task.

Bioinformatics provides opportunities for developing novel data analysis methods. Some of the grand challenges in bioinformatics include protein structure prediction, homology search, multiple alignment and phylogeny construction, genomic sequence analysis and gene finding, as well as applications in gene expression data analysis, drug discovery in pharmaceutical industry, etc. For example, in protein structure prediction, one is interested in determining the secondary, tertiary and quaternary structure of proteins, given their amino acid sequence. Homology search aims at detecting increasingly distant homologues, i.e., proteins related by evolution from a common ancestor. Multiple alignment and phylogenetic tree construction are interrelated problems. Multiple alignment aims at aligning a whole set of sequences to determine which subsequences are conserved. This works best when a phylogenetic tree of related proteins is available. Finally, gene finding aims at locating the genes in a DNA sequence.

Due to the surge of interest in this exciting and rapidly expanding field, Information Systems is planning a special issue on Bioinformatics and Biological Data Management. We solicit papers with important new insights and experiences concerning biological data analysis and modeling. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

Database Technology

Biological Problems Requiring Innovative Database Perspectives

If electronic submission is not possible, please send five hard copies to the following address:
Mohammed J. Zaki
Computer Science Department
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY 12180
USA

Important Dates: