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EvolCompGen
Today, EvolCompGen and Function started with a joint session. Keynote speaker Marc Robinson-Rechavi presented the current state of the debate on the ortholog conjecture. He made a compelling case for best practices and infrastructure supporting rigorous assessment of functional conservation among related genes. These themes were echoed throughout session, which nicely melded topics in both evolution and function. One observation from this joint session is that it is a great way to connect two COSIs!
The second EvolCompGen session had a focus on viral and bacterial genomes. We learned about which non-pharmaceutical interventions were most important for reduction of covid spread in Germany, how to cleverly represent viral genomes, and interesting properties of genomes found in Antarctica and the Dead sea. The third session had a wide range of topics, but a focus population genomics. We should highlight the proceedings talk on how to improve inference of ancestral genome segments.
The day ended with a panel discussion of current and future directions in Evolution and Comparative Genomics. Good natured bickering about the impact of AI methods in evolutionary studies, or rather the lack of impact, ensued. Both for "classic" phylogeny and cell-trajectory studies, typically cancer related, AI methods have not been the same driving force as in some other areas. Why is that?
NetBio
We had a fantastic and well-attended day at the NetBio COSI track at ISMB/ECCB2025, with a full room, people sitting on the stairs, and even an overflow room needed for parts of the program - great energy from the network biology community.
The morning session featured an all-female speaker lineup, highlighting the outstanding contributions of women in the field. Throughout the day, we were thrilled to see so many junior researchers presenting innovative work.
The session opened with a keynote by Laura Cantini on multi-modal learning for single-cell data integration, followed by talks from Mayra Luisa Ruiz Tejada Segura, Saniya Khullar, and Giulia Cesaro, covering diverse approaches to modeling cellular communication, regulation, and signaling.
The afternoon included proceedings presentations by Sindhura Kommu and Lucas Gillenwater, alongside selected talks from Ibrahim Alsaggaf, Kivilcim Ozturk, Erik Sonnhammer, Dewei Hu, Beatriz Urda-García, and Aritra Bose, covering topics ranging from gene regulation and structural basis of protein interactions to cancer biology. The speakers utilized a broad range of approaches, including graph machine learning, quantum computing, and discrete algorithms to address problems in these domains. We closed the day with a dynamic keynote by Jan Baumbach on the potential of quantum computing in network medicine.
🙌 A huge thank you to all speakers, attendees, and organizers!
📣 Don’t forget to vote in the Cytoscape Visualization Contest - voting is still open until tomorrow lunchtime! https://woobox.com/b9poce
Tomorrow another exciting half-day of NetBio is waiting for you! We also have 45 posters to visit on Wednesday and Thursday. We’ll announce our best talk and poster prizes during the ISMB award session on Thursday!
TransMed
The TransMed COSI celebrated its 10th anniversary today at ISMB/ECCB 2025. The program began with welcome remarks by co-chair Venkata Satagopam, reflecting on a decade of progress at the interface of clinical research, multi-omics, and digital health. The session show how translational bioinformatics has evolved from proof-of-concept studies to real-world clinical integration.
The day opened with the keynote speaker Melanie Schirmer, who introduced a gene-centric metagenomic framework to identify disease-associated microbial genes and operon structures across 9,000+ microbiome samples, offering novel insights into IBD and colorectal cancer. The day featured a rich series of contributed talks showcasing a forward-looking agenda focused on translational bioinformatics, integrative multi-omic, and AI-powered approaches for improving diagnostics, patient stratification, and therapeutic development. It closed with Jonathan Carlson who delivered an inspiring invited talk on the rise of general AI in biomedicine, emphasizing how generative models are beginning to reason over proteins, images, and molecular systems—heralding a transformative shift in biomedical discovery.
TransMed’s anniversary celebration not only honored its past but also signaled a future driven by integrative, interpretable, and clinically actionable biomedical data science.
VarI
This year marked the 15th anniversary of the VarI COSI session at ISMB, showcasing cutting-edge advances in variant interpretation. The session received 57 abstract submissions (34 for talks, 23 for posters), with 13 selected talks and 3 keynote presentations.
The morning keynote featured Dr. Alexander Sasse from Heidelberg University, who explored how multi-task convolutional neural networks decode genomic regulatory patterns while addressing their limitations in predicting directional effects of genetic variants on gene expression - crucial for understanding disease mechanisms. The session continued with five talks on protein language models for missense variant effect prediction.
Dr. Ellen McDonagh delivered the second keynote, presenting OpenTargets' latest developments in multi-omics integration, AI-driven target prioritization, and collaborative tools for therapeutic discovery.
The final keynote by Dr. Andrew Lawson highlighted research on somatic mutations in normal tissues, introducing NanoSeq - an ultra-accurate duplex sequencing method that revealed extensive clonal selection patterns in human tissues, offering new insights into cancer development and aging.
The afternoon session featured eight talks showcasing major advances in genetic disease research. Presenters revealed novel insights into neurodevelopmental disorders, identifying unexpected cellular mechanisms beyond neurons. New computational tools improved predictions of splicing defects and cancer drug resistance using single-cell data, while cardiovascular studies uncovered hundreds of CAD-associated genes including non-coding RNAs. Breakthroughs in polygenic scoring addressed ethnic disparities and gender-related genetic factors, and cancer research uncovered protective gene effects and recessive inheritance patterns. Together, these studies demonstrated how multi-omics approaches and single-cell technologies are revolutionizing our understanding of disease genetics.
With 213 registered delegates, the session fostered active discussion. The VarI poster session will continue tomorrow (July 22, 10:00-16:40 BST), and attendees can vote for best talks/posters at: https://bit.ly/vari-nominations.
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