Announcements

October 8, 2020 at 1:00PM EDT, Indigenous Voices in Computational Biology: An Introduction to Ethical Genomic Research with Indigenous People by Rene Begay, hosted by ISCB

Indigenous communities through the world have distinct languages, culture, political structures, and ways of knowing. For too long, these communities have been exploited for material goods, land, and more recent for biospecimens. It is important to note that Indigenous people are not anti-science but rather support science that includes their intrinsic perspectives and expertise. Indigenous scientists are emerging across the world bridging science, policy, technology, and Indigenous ways of knowing to determine how their communities can benefit from genomic and clinical health research. The Indigenous Voices in Computational Biology series from the ISCB Academy will highlight the work conducted by Indigenous researchers in the United States, New Zealand, and other countries. Topics will include genomic data sharing, ethical engagement with Indigenous peoples in paleogenomics, and how to responsibly conduct research on Indigenous ancestors (ancient DNA). As a result, Indigenous scientists have developed their own Native biobank and hosted an international Indigenous genomics conference to discuss ethical concerns within their communities and present community based genomic research that integrates Indigenous knowledge. This presentation will introduce the series overarching themes and provide the framework that encourages ethical engagement with Indigenous communities in genomic research.

Hosted by:

• October 08, 2020 at 1:00PM EDT, Indigenous Voices in Computational Biology: An Introduction to Ethical Genomic Research with Indigenous People by Rene Begay, hosted by ISCB
  
  
• October 15, 2020 at 11:00AM EDT, Altered RNA Splicing by Mutant p53 Activates Oncogenic RAS Signaling in Pancreatic Cancer by Luisa Escobar-Hoyos, hosted bv iRNA COSI and RNA Society
  
  
• November 12, 2020 at 11:00AM EST, The Illusion of Inclusion — The “All of Us” Research Program and Indigenous Peoples’ DNA by Keolu Fox, hosted by ISCB

The RECOMB/ISCB Conference on Regulatory and Systems Genomics invites abstracts for consideration for oral presentations or participation in a poster session. Abstracts may be either original unpublished work or original work that was published or accepted for publication in a high-impact journal between January 1, 2020 and November 1, 2020. Unpublished work will be considered for either an oral or poster presentation.

Some possible topics include:

• Network visualization and analysis
• Regulatory motifs and modules
• Epigenomics and chromatin state
• Non-coding RNAs
• Regulatory networks
• Co-transcriptional, post-transcriptional, and translational regulation
• Signal transduction networks
• Genetic, molecular, and phenotypic variation and human disease
• Cellular signatures of biological responses and disease states
• Mathematical modeling and simulation of biological systems
• Methods for systematic validation of high-throughput biological predictions
• Single-cell transcriptomics
• Single-cell proteomics
• Metabolomics
• Microbiome
• Machine learning methods for systems biology
• Translational systems biology

• Author notifications will occur on or around Monday, October 19, 2020

September 30, 2020 at 11:00AM EDT, RAxML-NG: a fast, scalable and user-friendly tool for maximum likelihood phylogenetic inferenceI by Alexey Kozlov and Alexandros Stamatakis, hosted by EvolCompGen COSI

Phylogenies are important for fundamental biological research, but also have numerous applications in biotechnology, agriculture and medicine. Finding the optimal tree under the popular maximum likelihood (ML) criterion is known to be NP-hard. Thus, highly optimized and scalable codes are needed to analyze constantly growing empirical datasets.

We present RAxML-NG, a from-scratch re-implementation of the established greedy tree search algorithm of RAxML/ExaML. RAxML-NG offers improved accuracy, flexibility, speed, scalability, and usability compared with RAxML/ExaML. On taxon-rich datasets, RAxML-NG typically finds higher-scoring trees than IQTree, an increasingly popular recent tool for ML-based phylogenetic inference (although IQ-Tree shows better stability). Finally, RAxML-NG introduces several new features, such as the detection of terraces in tree space and the recently introduced transfer bootstrap support metric.
The code is available under GNU GPL at https://github.com/amkozlov/raxml-ng. RAxML-NG web service (maintained by Vital-IT) is available at https://raxml-ng.vital-it.ch/.

Hosted by:

• October 02, 2020 at 11:00AM EDT, Evolutionary origins of SARS-CoV-2 and tracking its spread using phylodynamic data integration by Philippe Lemey, hosted by ISCB
  
  
• October 08, 2020 at 1:00PM EDT, Indigenous Voices in Computational Biology: An Introduction to Ethical Genomic Research with Indigenous People by Rene Begay, hosted by ISCB
  
  
• October 15, 2020 at 11:00AM EDT, Altered RNA Splicing by Mutant p53 Activates Oncogenic RAS Signaling in Pancreatic Cancer by Luisa Escobar-Hoyos, hosted bv iRNA COSI and RNA Society
  
  
• November 12, 2020 at 11:00AM EST, The Illusion of Inclusion — The “All of Us” Research Program and Indigenous Peoples’ DNA by Keolu Fox, hosted by ISCB

ISCB Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee Sponsors Special Webinar Series -
Indigenous Voice in Computational Biology