Pre-SIG meeting " Genome Annotation" A BioSapiens initiative Goal of the workshop were - to create an open forum to discuss current problems on function annotation, - to foster the analysis of key scientific issues in function prediction, - to promote the collaboration among scientist interested in the development of computational methods in this key area of Molecular Biology.

Coordination this first activity by: BioSapiens A European Network for Integrated Genome Annotation Network of Excellence funded by the European Commission within its FP6 Programme, under the thematic area "Life sciences, genomics and biotechnology for health,"contract number LHSG-CT

DNA Annotation Proteome Annotation Functional Annotation Gene definition/ alternative splicing Regulators and promoters Expression Variation (haplotypes and SNPs) Protein families, functional specificity Membrane proteins and ligands 3D protein structure Post translational modification and localisation Sequence and structure to function Protein-protein complexes Pathways and networks

BioSapiens THEMATIC RESEARCH (first year) WP15Infectious diseases The focus of this Work Package is on two infectious diseases and their associated pathogens: HIV/AIDS and HCV/Hepatitis C. The objective is to bring together a wide variety of bioinformatics methods, experimental data and know-how, in order to advance the understanding of the diseases, provide tools to optimise existing therapies, and help in the development of new therapies and vaccines. WP16Downs syndrome The objective of this WP is to exploit the methods and the expertise of the network to improve our understanding of trisomy 21. The outcome will be an integrated publicly available web site containing information on the genomic content and potential function of the different elements of chromosome 21, obtained using the most up-to date bioinformatics methodologies.

By Ewan Birney

Related Projects 1.Roderic Guigo, ENCODE high resolution analyisis of 1% of the human genome, NIH 2.Structural Genomics Consortiums (SPINE and others) 3.Shoshana Wodak, +Cheryl Arrowsmith (Toronto) GeneFun, function analysis pipeline, EU VI FP 1.Rich Roberts, Peter Karp annotation problem American Academy of Microbiology, NSF

Future -Presentations will be available at: -Consider publication of this workshop - We will consider organizing a second edition next year associated to the European Conference in Computational Biology (Madrid 28 Sept. - 1 Oct).. Including contributed papers and posters. Inviting other related projects (experimentalist, and DBs). Exploring the areas that were not covered this year. (better food and coffee!!)