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Focus on an ISCB Affiliated Regional Group:
OKBIOS 2005 Symposium Summary Report

The second annual symposium for the Oklahoma Bioinformatics Society (OKBIOS 2005) was held October 28th, 2005 at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The event presented cutting-edge research in bioinformatics and focused upon the expanding role of informatics in the life sciences, which in part was highlighted by the keynote speaker, Dr. Richard Cummings of OUHSC, who introduced the relatively new field of glycoinformatics to the audience.

Other featured speakers and their topics included:

• Dr. Anton Yuriyev, the Executive Director of Ariadne Genomics, spoke about Ariadne’s ongoing development of pathway analysis software and its application to microarray data analysis.
  
• Dr. Harold Garner, an entrepreneur who has formed several companies and professor at the UTSW Medical Center, presented bioinformatics methods being employed to reduce the high costs of pharmaceutical research and development.
  
• Dr. Mike Centola, president of RiGen and OMRF researcher, talked about systems approaches to gain a better understanding of disease causation, using rheumatoid arthritis as an example.
  
• Dr. Tyrrell Conway demonstrated the use of a microarray database and web server developed in his lab to help better understand the biology of E. coli.
• Dr. Edward Knobbe, VP for research at Nomadics, presented on biomolecular sensors.
  
• Dr. Mikhail Dozmorov (OUHSC) spoke about his bioinformatics analysis of microarray data on bladder cancer.
  
• Dr. Yuriy Gusev (OUHSC) presented his study of molecular interaction networks in common human cancers.

The day was concluded with talks on developing bioinformatics curricula, both at OUHSC (by Dr. Dee Wu) and at OKCCC (by Dr. John McMurray). Within Oklahoma, all major universities, most of the regional colleges and several biotechnology companies sent participants to attend OKBIOS 2005, with 140 registrants total. Sixteen posters were presented, and the three best student posters were selected by members of the Program Committee, who awarded Mary Amonsen of OBU 1st place, Jana Comer of OSU 2nd place, and Isaac Harley of OMRF was awarded 3rd place.

The Program Committee for OKBIOS 2005 consisted of Jonathan Wren (OU, President), Yuriy Gusev (OUHSC, Vice President), Patricia Ayoubi (OSU, Sec/Treas), Dan Brackett (OUHSC), Doris Kupfer (FAA), Jim Mason (State Chamber), Kelly Newton-Kranzler (KAN Research), Dawn Scott (OSRHE) and Dee Wu (OUHSC). Participants rated several different aspects of the conference and on a one-to-five scale, with five being the highest satisfaction level, the average overall rating for the symposium was 4.5.

OKBIOS 2005 was generously supported through NIH grant # P20RR016478-05, and student awards were sponsored by the Oklahoma State Chamber of Commerce.

For further information about the 2005 symposium, future symposia, or the Oklahoma Bioinformatics Society itself, please see w3.ouhsc.edu/surgery/pancan/OKC_bioinfo2/.