Although there are upward estimates of 100 million organisms on Earth, biomedical research primarily focuses on only a fraction of “model” organisms. Biodiversity studies can form the basis for research on evolution, speciation, and distribution, and also provide an important baseline for studies of not only conservation but also the study of emerging diseases. Comprehensive, simultaneous analyses of heterogenous data types across a large sampling of organisms can provide valuable insights towards the understanding of the etiology of diseases and their host epidemiology. Informatics solutions are therefore needed to aid in the integration of a multitude of data types (e.g., geographical, ecological, temporal, and morphological) such that they can complement the paradigm of traditional molecular sequence-derived research. Existing biomedical computational solutions, which may have been originally designed to study "model" organisms, might also be used to elucidate significant findings in "non-model" organisms. Similarly, biodiversity methods and techniques that might have been developed for examining biodiversity hypotheses may offer valuable insight to biomedical inquiries.

Manuscripts are hereby requested for topics in contemporary biodiversity informatics, including (but not limited to):

Priority will be given to those manuscripts that involve the combination of existing biodiversity and biomedical techniques, along with evaluations that incorporate both biomedical and biodiversity knowledge.

Manuscripts are due July 17, 2006 at Midnight (All US Time Zones). A limited number of submissions will be selected for oral presentation.

All manuscripts must be submitted to psb-submit @ helix.stanford.edu in electronic format – acceptable formats are PostScript (*.ps) and Adobe Acrobat (*.pdf). Submitted manuscripts are limited to twelve (12) pages in the PSB publication format. All manuscripts must be formatted according to the specified PSB instructions. If figures can not be easily resized and placed precisely in the text, then it should be clear that with appropriate modifications, the total manuscript length would be within the page limit. Color pictures can be printed at the expense of the author (The fee is $500 per page of color pictures, and is payable at the time of camera-ready submission).

Accepted papers should be thought of as short journal articles; the PSB Proceedings is an archival, rigorously peer-reviewed publication that is indexed in and linked from Medline.

Posters may be submitted for suitable preliminary studies and demonstrations. Posters are exhibited several days during the conference and include topics from all PSB sessions. Posters are also means to give live software or Web site demonstrations and are encouraged as complementary forums to discuss topics in addition to the oral presentations. In order to be included in the Abstracts booklet to be distributed at the conference, one-page posters abstracts should be submitted by November 10. . Please see the PSB website for instructions on abstract submission

Posters are not peer-reviewed nor indexed in Medline.

The Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (PSB) is an international, multidisciplinary conference for the presentation and discussion of current research in the theory and application of computational methods in problems of biological significance. PSB 2007 will be held January 3-7, 2007 at the Grand Wailea, Wailea, Maui, Hawaii. Tutorials will be offered prior to the start of the conference.

PSB has been designed to be responsive to the need for critical mass in sub-disciplines within biocomputing. For that reason, it is the only meeting whose sessions are defined dynamically each year in response to specific proposals. PSB sessions are targeted to provide a forum for publication and discussion of research in biocomputing’s “hot topics”. In this way, PSB provides an early forum for serious examination of emerging methods and approaches in a rapidly changing field. More information on the conference can be obtained from the conference Web page.

Manuscript topics and questions should be addressed to the session chair:

Indra Neil Sarkar, PhD
Divisions of Invertebrate Zoology and Library Services
American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at 79th Street
New York, NY 10024 USA
sarkar@amnh.org