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ISCB-LA SoIbio BioNetMX 2022 is being planned as a dual channel distribution conference, offering both in-person and virtual attendance.  We hope you can join us in at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Campus Juriquilla: Juriquilla, Querétaro, MX.  If not, consider joining virtual in the conference robust platform.

Featured Topic Areas at ISCB-LA SoIBio BioNetMX 2022:

  • Biomedical Omics
  • Bioinformatics of Microbes and Microbiomes
  • Evolutionary, Comparative and Population Genomics
  • Macromolecular Sequence, Structure, and Function
  • Genome Sequence Analysis
  • Systems Biology and Networks
  • General Bioinformatics/Computational Biology
 

Open Calls for Submissions:

Proceedings/Papers Submissions - 12 August, 2022
Abstract Submission (oral consideration) - 14 September, 2022
Poster Submissions (in-person and online) - 30 September, 2022
 

Call for Paper Submissions

The Bioinformatics Advances Journal has committed to considering publication of a special issue for peer-reviewed articles from the conference.

Deadline: 12 August, 2022

Paper Submissions
 

Abstract Talk and Poster Submissions

ISCB-Latin America SoIBio BioNetMX 2022 invites abstracts topical to bioinformatics and computational biology for consideration for abstract talk and/or poster presentation.

Abstract Deadline: 14 September, 2022
Poster Deadline: 30 September, 2022

Abstract Submissions
Poster Submissions
 
Conference Information
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ISMB 2022

Day 5, And that's a wrap!

Day 5: Highlights & Recap!


And that's a wrap - 700+ Posters - 400+ Talks - 10 Tracks all on a hybrid platform! The final day took off with an engaging keynote presentation by ISCB's Innovator Award winner and ended with a plethora of dynamic talks and presentations. Again, a huge thank you to all who made this conference such a successful hybrid event, bumps and all. 

Please read on for more on our final day and what sets ISMB apart!

Highlights



The final keynote address of the ISMB 2022 conference was from Dr. Nuria Lopez-Bigas, the ISCB Innovator Award winner, whose research focuses on the identification of cancer driver mutations. Tumor development follows variation and selection of Darwinian evolution. To find cancer drivers, Dr. Lopez-Bigas is working on identifying signals of positive selection as this is an effective way of uncovering cancer drivers. Signals of positive selection include genes that have mutated more frequently than background mutation rates, genes with a significant regional clustering of mutations, and genes with a bias toward high functional mutations.

The Lopez-Bigas research team is also working on a compendium of mutational drivers which aims to identify as yet unknown cancer driver genes. In addition, they’ve created BoostDM, inspired by evolutionary biology, which uses machine learning to uncover feature combinations that define driver mutations in each gene and tumor type. The findings have been integrated into the Cancer Genome Interpreter and the hope is to personalize cancer medicine and subsequent treatment, as well as to empower patients to better understand their data, and make them aware that their data has value and that in sharing it, they’re helping not only themselves but the research community and, more importantly, other
cancer patients.

COSI Recaps:

Bio-Ontologies COSI
This year’s ISMB marked the 25th year of the Bio-Ontologies COSI, which makes it the longest running COSI at ISMB. To celebrate, we featured outstanding keynotes from Dr. Maria Keet and Dr. Melissa Haendel, the latter of which took place during a shared session with the Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) community. The COSI featured 18 paper (2 proceedings papers) and poster presentations and featured research on a wide range of topics including the detection and prevention of bias encoding in ontology development, evaluation of named entity recognition systems and automated solutions to identifying inconsistencies in ontology annotations, improved integration of clinical data and
biomedical ontologies to facilitate rare disease research, strategies to improve ontology FAIRness, new deep learning methods to improve and enhance ontology axioms, and we even saw the introduction of several new ontologies in the domains of cognitive-behavioral symptomatology, Sickle Cell Disease, and Rice Trait concepts.

BioVis COSI
BioVis 2022 started with a keynote by Tatiana von Landesberger (University of Cologne, Germany) on the very timely topic of visual analytics approaches for pandemic data. This included efforts on containing the ‘silent pandemic’ of antibiotic resistant pathogens and of course the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as well as reflections and lessons learned. The keynote was followed by one long abstract talk and four short ones. The talks in this session focused on single-cell data analysis and clustering approaches. In the lunch break, the posters were presented, leading to many lively discussions. The second session featured more abstract talks, ranging from metagenomic profile visualization to cohort analysis and the visual analysis of tumor phylogenies. The closing session featured another long abstract talk as well as lightning talks by all poster presenters and a keynote talk by Lennart Martens (Ghent University, Belgium), who shared his research and insights on new perspectives on proteomics through machine learning, especially on post-translational modifications of proteins and the visualization challenges that come with this. Overall, more than two thirds of the talks were given live from the venue. We had a very active participation not only by the on-site attendees but also from the online participants.

EvolCompGen
We enjoyed another full day of fantastic presentations and posters from researchers around the world on subjects as diverse as protein domain architecture evolution, conserved transcripts clusters databases, statistical models for protein alignment, comparative genomics applied to brain tumors, learning genetic features associated with types of diseases and infections driven by pathogens, selection mechanisms underlying convergent traits, or the use of evolution and machine learning to identify multiscale molecular features of antibiotic resistance. The afternoon track ended with a panel discussion where in-person and virtual attendees exchanged ideas on fundamental questions related to gene/synteny/domain/isoform evolution and large-scale phylogenetics. We thank all in-person and virtual attendees for their patience and participation as we conclude our 2022 EvolCompGen program! Stay tuned for announcements on the (non-proceedings) talk and poster winners. We also welcome you to join our COSI community and the 2023 ISMB EvolCompGen planning/organizing committee via Twitter: @EvolComp, Web: evolcompgen.org, or Slack: bit.ly/join_evolcompgen.

We look forward to seeing you in 2023!

Special Sessions:

COVID-19

The special session on COVID-19 research brought us some truly unique findings! First was the unexpected discovery from the Host Genetic Initiative that the 3p21.31 locus has been found to be associated with severity of and complications associated with COVID-19. HGI also hopes that by working together as a community we can uncover more real-time, reliable results and give us a better picture of what is happening with the spread of COVID-19 and its infection profile.

Next was the investigation by Cyclica Canada into off-target drug repurposing who found a rational drug-centric coronavirus repurposing candidate, capmatinib, which showed efficacy against multiple coronaviruses. The explanation for which was that its antiviral activity is not driven by its primary target.

Finally, we heard about the discoveries from the open science Serratus team, who are hoping to be able to predict and prevent another pandemic. The team analyzed 5.7 million sequencing libraries (in 11 days!), and have discovered 9 new species of coronavirus, all in aquatic organisms. The project has helped to show the importance of reanalyzing data, especially since we can now access global levels of data. Reanalysis will help us to create meaningful knowledge from older data that we can distil down to human wisdom that can have large impacts on human response to viruses like COVID-19. Serratus exemplifies what it means to be at the cutting edge of computational virology, and hopes that computational virologists continue to be drivers to COVID-19 research.

Equity-Focused Research
During the Equity-Focused research presentations, we first heard a discussion on race versus genetics in clinical decision-making, reporting that non-white populations are heavily underrepresented in UK Biobanks. In addition to requiring greater ethnic representation in the UK Biobank, there was a clear message that we need to let genetics talk to us instead of making assumptions based on how we as researchers define someone else’s race.

There was also a discussion of how some genome editing tools may be qualified as non-stochastic, which can be problematic. Specifically, if some genome editing and assessment tools are programmed to target genetic regions that are much more common in some populations over others, conclusions about health, treatment, and potential outcomes may be harmfully incorrect.
            
A third talk during the equity session presented the idea that in the field of biodiversity genomics, it would be in the best interest of science for there to be a low-cost DNA sequencing  method which would allow people beyond academia to become part of and engage in genomic sequencing, regardless of economic station. The Amazon Biobank, a community-based genetic database, has been offered as a solution to increase access to biodiversity research. The project combines blockchain and smart contract technologies to promote adequate sharing among all those who collect, insert, store, and process genomic data.
           
 Finally was a talk about bias in science journalism. From an analysis of 22, 000 non-research articles published by Nature, two sources of disparity were identified: gender and perceived regional origin of a name. The results uncovered an obvious skew towards quoting and citing males in Nature science journalism-related articles, but the trend is moving toward equal representation more quickly than what is found in academic publishing. With regard to an analysis of name origin, there was a significant over-representation of names with predicted Celtic/English origin and an under-representation of names with a perceived East Asian origin. It is clear that greater representation of both gender and ethnicity is necessary. 
These talks are now available on ISMB On-Demand.
 
2022 Conference Support Fellowships
Each year, conference organizers are committed to providing support to as many eligible applicants as possible. Of the 155 applications received, ISCB was able to grant 47 Awardees up to 50% of their costs associated with conference attendance, both virtually and in-person.   This years group of Fellowships represented 6 continents and 17 countries. 

Conference Support Fellowship consideration is based on membership and accepted work to Conferences.

 
 

Thank you to our generous sponsors!

 
 
See you next year in Lyon, France!
 
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ISMB 2022

Day 4, Highlights & Recap

Day 4: Highlights & Recap!


With only one day left, ISMB 2022 gave us a day starting off with a stellar keynote, time to discover with exhibitors, and then dove right into 9 different tracks of science. 

Highlights



Our fourth keynote address of the ISMB 2022 conference was from Dr. Ron Shamir, the ISCB Accomplishments by a Senior Scientist Award winner. Dr. Shamir’s talk was focused on the need for there to be a better understanding of disease. The current treatment methods in the medical field are a “one treatment fits all” approach, but what would be more beneficial to those in need of medical treatment, especially for cancer, would be a personalized diagnosis and a specific treatment tailored to the individual—and that is what Dr. Shamir’s research lab is hoping to better understand. They are aiming for a more intricate knowledge in basic science and medicine, with the goal of developing methods for personalized analysis. The suggested approach is for integrative methods, which will provide more robust findings overall, and allow for a more holistic and personalized solution to patient care and treatment.

Dr. Shamir’s lab has demonstrated the usefulness of integrated analysis through the development of algorithms, called Nemo and Domino, to detect similarities between cancers and detect crucial areas of active genes. There is also a focus on identifying driver genes specific to an individual, based on their personalized gene expression and mutation profiles—using an algorithm called Prodigy—with the hope of determining personalized treatment. A final aim of the research happening in Dr. Shamir’s lab is to be able to predict the risk a person has of developing cancer based on information gathered during routine checkups. 

COSI Recaps:

EvolCompGen COSI
It has been an exciting first day for Evolution and Comparative Genomics (EvolCompGen) COSI. We had the opportunity to listen to 13 talks covering a wide variety of subjects ranging from innovative phylogenetic reconstruction methods using supervised learning, likelihood-based co-estimation methods, LASSO-based methods for selecting appropriate sites in alignments, to innovative applications of phylogenetic trees for detecting somatic Single-nucleotide variants, inferring the evolution of cancer tumors, extending our knowledge on the evolution of pathogenic Liberibacter species, methods to trace fungal and fern trees, the evolution of the CRISPR-Cas systems, and reproducible workflows for phylogeny. Keep the discussions going by joining us on Slack and Twitter: bit.ly/join_evolcompgen and @EvolComp. Check out our posters on Juno and leave comments for the presenters too.
 
These talks are now available on ISMB On-Demand.
 

Don't forget to visit our exhibitors!

Start your final day off right at ISMB 2022.  Grab some coffee, meet the exhibitors and get ready to learn and discover. 
 

Feeling the ISCB Travel Mug FOMO?

Not to worry - Mugs for sale at the ISCB Exhibit Booth, Grand Terrace. 

$20/per mug
Cash only

First come, first serve!
 

Tips & Tricks:

If you are a speaker or poster presenter please be sure to review details here: https://www.iscb.org/ismb2022-general/presenter-information#join

To all virtual attendees: we all need a break and caffeine fix.  When a session ends, take a breather, but please remember to join a new session from the schedule!

Slides not changing? Refresh or try a different browser.

Unable to screen share while virtually presenting?  Security upgrades can prevent screen sharing for unregistered apps - try adding the web browser to the list of permitted apps.

Updates happen -  for best experience, please re login to browser at the start of every day and session!

If you are unnable to connect, log out and login with a magic link (not password).

For the best virtual experience at ISMB 2022 we recommend using the latest version of Chrome (https://www.google.com/chrome/).

As a reminder masks are required for in-person attendance at ISMB 2022 as outlined at: https://www.iscb.org/ismb2022-general/health-and-safety

 
Thursday, July 14: Highlights & Reminders


8:15AM - 8:30AM:  Morning Welcome 
8:30AM - 9:30AM:  ISCB Innovator Award Keynote: Núria López-BigasComprehensive identification of cancer driver mutations
9:30AM - 10:15AM:  Caffeinate and Connect with exhibitors (Grand Terrace)
10:15AM - 12:15PM: Morning Sessions: RegSys COSIMLCSB COSIBOSC COSI3DSIG COSIMICROBIOME COSIEvolution and Comparative Genomics COSISpecial Session: COVID-19Bio-Ontologies COSI
12:15PM - 1:15PM:  Lunch and Ideation Hall (Posters on Display) Room: Exhibit Hall A (Level 1)
12:15PM - 1:15PM:  Protein Codeathon: Closing Project Discussions, Publication Timelines, and Suggestions
12:30PM - 2:00PM: Career Fair (Grand Terrace)
1:15PM - 3:15PM:   RegSys COSIMLCSB COSIBOSC/Bio-Ontologies joint session3DSIG COSIMICROBIOME COSIEvolution and Comparative Genomics COSIEquity-focused Research Track
3:15PM - 3:45PM:  Refreshment Break
3:45PM - 4:45PM:  Sessions Continue
4:50PM - 5:15PM: Awards Presentations & Conference Closing Room: Madison CD

 

Thank you to our generous sponsors!

 
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ISMB 2022

Day 3, Highlights & Recap

Day 3: Highlights & Recap!


What a day ISMB 2022 just had!  Half way through the conference and going strong.  Thank you to everyone for their continued patience and kindness as we continue to work to make the remainder of the conference a smooth and enlightening experience for all attendees, both virtually and in person. 

Highlights



Dr. Aida Ouangraoua brought us together this morning for our third keynote address of ISMB 2022 to discuss her research on the challenges and solutions of investigating gene evolution at the transcript level, which provides a more refined level of functional evolution and diversity than considering gene evolution at the gene level. Even with this greater refinement, however, are four distinct challenges to transcript-level investigations. For instance, gene alignment models must account for gene and exon-intron structure, transcript evolution models must account for changes at transcript and gene levels, gene orthology/paralogy definitions must be extended at the transcript level, and clean and complete transcriptome data are required for transcript-level exploration of gene evolution.

To address these challenges, Dr. Ouangraoua’s lab has made some great methodological contributions, namely, multiple spliced alignment, transcript tree–gene tree reconciliation, and developing a transcript-centric database (TranscriptDB). But, as with any scientific endeavour, there is still more work to be done! Dr. Ouangraoua rounded out her keynote address by presenting important perspectives to consider with the study of transcript-level gene evolution. Researchers will need to consider more complete models of gene family evolution, more complete models of gene structure evolution, and more complete models of transcript evolution. These more complete models can then be used to improve gene and species trees.

COSI Recaps:

iRNA COSI
The 2022 iRNA COSI took place on July 11 and 12. Our first iRNA track talk was given by Kin Fai Au from Ohio State University who discussed analysis of sequencing considering long read sequencing for isoform identification and quantification, with very useful recommendations. This talk was followed by several long and short talks discussing the use of long read sequencing and its comparison to short read sequencing considering many different datasets, conditions and systems, enabling collectively a deeper and much increased exploration and knowledge of the transcriptome than what is known in current annotations. Near the end of the first day, we also heard about the analysis single-cell RNA-seq, tools and examples of applications. Our COSI dinner at The Great Dane Pub and Brewing Company, including our traditional quiz proved very entertaining, and led to the conclusion that we all need to improve our knowledge of Madison and Wisconsin. Our second day was kicked off by Liana Lareau from UC Berkeley who discussed the study of splicing in single-cell sequencing, presenting a new tool that addresses the low of sequencing depth per cell, leading to very insightful observations. The following talks explored the computational analysis of diverse levels of gene expression regulation, from splicing and 3’ end processing to translation in different systems. We also heard about tools for the prediction of CRISPR/Cas9 gRNA design and therapeutic siRNAs. Our last keynote, Chase Weidmann from the University of Michigan, discussed RNA-protein interactions and a chemical probing approach to investigate them. Overall, it was a very productive meeting.

VarI COSI
This year VarI COSI held its 12th session, bringing the latest developments and discoveries on variant interpretation to ISMB. The session included 11 talks, 1 proceedings presentation and 3 keynote speakers. The first keynote featured Nicole Sorenzo who opened with a complete overview of her major discoveries characterizing the genetic and epigenetic components associated to human heterogeneity across multiple ‘omics readouts and how they relate to complex phenotypes as well as to rare diseases. The second keynote was given by David Robertson who provided a comprehensive review of the current understanding of SARS-CoV-2 phylogenetic origins, the sequence and structural features associated to its spread in humans and its ongoing evolutionary dynamics. Nathaniel Sharp gave the third keynote on the rate of mutation accumulation in diploid versus haploid yeast and how copy number context can affect mutation rates. Talks and proceeding presentations covered major areas in the field of variant interpretation, including approaches based on protein structural features and protein-protein interaction networks (Missense3D-PPI and Network&AA methods); statistical genetics methods to enhance the detection of genotype-phenotype associations (e.g. PolarMorphism method and sex-specific effects in hypertension); somatic variant interpretation and evolutionary trajectories in cancer phylogenies (MASTRO method), comparative genomic approaches to detect sequence constraints in humans -including constraints on synonymous variants - and how these relate to pathogenic variants (e.g. the Homologous Missense Constraint score); studies for improved clinical assessment of genetic variants (CAGI experiments lessons and calibration approaches of computational scores); and the assessment of the regulatory role of RNA G-quadruplex (rG4). Finally, the session included a presentation by our sponsor Variantyx, where Shane Hussey presented the validation of WGS for clinical use down to 50ng of DNA using a PCR-Free tagmentation protocol. This year's session saw more than 150 delegate registrations, and active participation with questions and discussions both on site and virtual.

TransMed COSI
TransMed COSI 2022 started with a very insightful keynote talk by Prof. Anthony Brookes (Department of Genetics & Genome Biology, University of Leicester, UK) discussing solutions and infrastructures that are necessary for data science in biomedicine and the importance of data findability and reuse.
We had 5 proceedings, 12 talks and 40 posters. These covered different methodologies, especially machine learning, multi-layered clinical, translational data analysis and their applications in different translational medicine areas including different types of diseases (cancer, COVID19, endometriosis, paediatric sepsis), drug response, signalling networks, genotype-phenotype associations, cancer imaging and healthcare data.
Our COSI session closed with another great keynote talk by Dr. Elana J. Fertig (SKCCC / Johns Hopkins University, United States) on how spatial transcriptomics can be used to explore mechanisms of therapeutic response and resistance in clinical trials.

Education
The Education COSI featured an exciting and diverse program of talks, including invited keynotes, contributed abstract talks, and two talks from accepted proceedings papers. The ISCB education program kicked off with the Workshop on Education in Bioinformatics (WEB), a mix of talks and working sessions on the theme of sustainability. The main COSI program featured two eminent keynote speakers: Ben Moore of EMBL-EBI speaking about bioinformatics education in low and middle income countries (LMICs) and Charla Lambert of Cold Spring Harbor Labs (CSHL) speaking about inclusiveness in bioinformatics education. The contributed talks covered topics in infrastructure for supporting trainers and trainees, novel pedagogical ideas, and case studies in bioinformatics training for diverse audiences and training needs. We closed out the day’s program with a lively panel discussion continuing the conversation on inclusiveness in bioinformatics education, featuring our keynote speakers and Lucia Peixoto representing the ISCB Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
(EDI) Committee.
 
Technology Theatre 

Today’s TechTrack talks provided a glimpse into some exciting tools available for scientists! A handful of useful and user friendly options for creating 3D models for protein structure were discussed (AlphaFold, IntFOLD, Phyre2, and CATH), as well as servers to analyse the impact of missense variants (Missense 3D), and to map these variants to protein complexes (GWYRE). There were also some great advances in spatial biology profiling technologies (Giotto Suite) discussed!

Notably, there was a distinct message of collaboration through the use of cloud-
based technology outlined in this morning’s TechTrack talks, specifically Google Cloud’s RAD Lab for Research, and the LaTeX Authoring Platform, Overleaf. The RAD Lab presentation pointed out some great benefits for researchers to store their work in, and work from, the cloud. They pointed out not only the security of the cloud, but the scalability of the cloud to handle growing data sets, that the cloud enables AI and machine learning on larger data sets with more/different computer power, that the cloud aids in the reproducibility of research, and, most notably, the cloud allows for easier and more streamlined collaboration of researchers within and between countries. Overleaf noted a similar collaborative benefit, especially with their professional and other upgraded account versions: users can invite an unlimited number of collaborators!

Finally, the idea of a holistic approach to publishing—that is, alternatives to the
traditional approach to academic publishing—was put forth by F1000 Research. It was pointed out that in the last two years, researchers have been moving away from traditional academic publishing that is behind a paywall, has a closed peer-review system, and an emphasis on journal-level metrics in favor of more open-access-friendly methods for both themselves and readers. F1000 notes that they provide open publishing solutions that include open access, open data, open source, open methods, and open peer review to help encourage interaction and collaboration within the scientific community.
These talks are now available on ISMB On-Demand.
 

Tips & Tricks:

If you are a speaker or poster presenter please be sure to review details here: https://www.iscb.org/ismb2022-general/presenter-information#join

To all virtual attendees: we all need a break and caffeine fix.  When a session ends, take a breather, but please remember to join a new session from the schedule!

Slides not changing? Refresh or try a different browser.

Unable to screen share while virtually presenting?  Security upgrades can prevent screen sharing for unregistered apps - try adding the web browser to the list of permitted apps.

Updates happen -  for best experience, please re login to browser at the start of every day and session!

If you are unnable to connect, log out and login with a magic link (not password).

For the best virtual experience at ISMB 2022 we recommend using the latest version of Chrome (https://www.google.com/chrome/).

As a reminder masks are required for in-person attendance at ISMB 2022 as outlined at: https://www.iscb.org/ismb2022-general/health-and-safety

 

Navigate ISMB 2022 Like a Pro:

If it's your first time visiting the ISMB 2022 site you can enter your email (SAME EMAIL USED TO REGISTER) to receive a magic link to log in.  Once you've logged in you can update your profile and set a password for future events or continue using magic links. Attendance of the sessions during ISMB 2022 will require login. When viewing the conference platform on Chrome, the login button will be located in the upper-right hand corner. If you encounter any issues, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Get the Conference App! You can also experience ISMB 2022 with the JUNO Live App available from Android https://play.google.com/  or Apple iO https://www.apple.com/ca/app-store/

 
Wednesday, July 13: Highlights & Reminders


7:30AM - 8:30AM:  Virtual Poster Session (via Conference Platform)
8:30AM - 8:45AM:  Morning Welcome 
8:45AM - 9:45AM:  ISCB Accomplishments by a Senior Scientist Award Keynote: Ron Shamir, Integration, modularity and network analysis for understanding disease
9:45AM - 10:30AM:  Caffeinate and Connect with exhibitors (Grand Terrace)
10:30AM - 12:30PM: Morning Sessions: RegSys COSIHitSeq COSIMLCSB COSIBOSC COSI3DSIG COSIMICROBIOME COSIEvolution and Comparative Genomics COSIBioVis COSIBio-Ontologies COSI
12:30PM - 2:30PM:  Lunch and Ideation Hall (Poster Session B) Room: Exhibit Hall A (Level 1)
2:30PM - 3:30PM:  Sessions Continue
3:30PM - 4:00PM:  Caffeinate and Connect with exhibitors 
4:00PM - 6:00PM:  Sessions Continue

6:15PM - 7:15PM:  Birds of a Feather (BoF): 
Comparative Genomics Resource: a powerful tool for scientific discovery 
Cloud Computing and Bioinformatics 
6:15PM - 7:15PM:  Virtual Poster Session (via Conference Platform)
6:15PM - 8:15PM:  Protein Codeathon: Final Team Presentations

 

Thank you to our generous sponsors!

 
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ISMB 2022

Day 2, Highlights & Recap

Day 2: Highlights & Recap!

 

Dear ISMB 2022 Participant, 

As many of you have noticed our first run at a large hybrid event has been a bumpy one. ISCB knew the challenges would be many as we entered territory with a lot of unknowns. What we didn’t anticipate was the level of the challenges. To further exacerbate this, our team is down one staff member due to a positive COVID test. This means that it is taking us longer to address issues than we would like. Please know our team is hustling behind the scenes as quickly as we can to address all issues arising. 

Most importantly, we want to THANK YOU for your patience, understanding, and for giving us a bit of grace, keeping kindness at the forefront. ISCB prides itself in executing excellent conferences and we know we are not meeting your standards at the moment. We promise to persevere with resilience, working tirelessly to make each day a better, less frustrating experience. 

Again, thank you for your understanding, 

Sincerely, 

                

Christine Orengo                   Diane Kovats
ISCB, President                     ISCB, CEO


Highlights



Day two of ISMB 2022 started off with a talk from ISCB's Overton Prize keynote speaker Dr. Po-Ruh Loh, who is investigating how genetic variation affects human traits. In seeking answers to this question, Dr. Loh and his team have outlined three distinct challenges. First, they note that testing genotype-phenotype associations is statistically tricky. Second, sequencing thousands of people is an expensive undertaking. And third, most human traits don’t follow simple genetic models of inheritance. To address these challenges, the Loh lab is looking at what haplotype-informed analysis of traits might reveal about genetic inheritance and have made great strides—finding promising results—with studies on rare-coding variants, variable number tandem repeats, and copy number variants. Even with the hard work put in thus far, and the encouraging results that have accompanied his team’s work, Dr. Loh stated that there is still much more to learn. For instance, even when causal variants seem clear, the biological mechanisms responsible for them remain elusive. But the important, and exciting, takeaway to this point is that haplotype-informed analyses have given us more information into how genetic variation functions to shape human phenotypes.

COSI Recaps:

CompMS
The CompMS COSI featured excellent presentations on computational mass spectrometry in proteomics and metabolomics. As well as nine oral presentations from selected abstracts and proceedings, there were keynote presentations by Dr. Brian Searle (OSU), who described how deep learning to predict fragment intensities and retention times powers state-of-the-art proteomics analyses, Dr. Gary Patti (WUSTL), who illuminated the source of many unknown signals in metabolomics and their implications for precision medicine, Dr. Ying Ge (UW Madison), who gave a call to action for computational experts to contribute their skills to top-down mass spectrometry, and Dr. Michael Shortreed (UW Madison), who gave a retrospective and prospective view of challenges in computational proteomics.

SysMod
The 7th annual SysMod COSI included three sessions focused on methods of modeling and their applications, modeling signal transduction, gene regulation, protein-protein interaction, and application of single-cell technology. Two keynote talks were presented by Prof. Reinhard Laubenbacher, and Prof. Ana Conesa. Bhanwar Lal Puniya announced the three poster awards winners: Carolina I Larkin, Kang Jin, and Shaimaa Bakr. Current chairman Andreas Draeger is stepping down, and a new team of organizers will be elected soon.

Bioinfo-Core
This year the Bioinfo-Core session had four talks: 
  • the most recent updates of JBrowse 2: an open source genome browser widely used by bioinformatics core facilities;

  • an insightful presentation of the availability and challenges of training for core facility management;

  • an open tech stack for the development of reproducible, portable, and robust bioinformatic pipelines developed in CWL; and

  • tools for Hi-C data, specifically for connecting high-resolution 3D chromatin organization with epigenomics.

The keynote speaker was Jonathan Dursi, who is the author of the Research Computing Teams newsletter (https://www.researchcomputingteams.org/). Jonathan’s talk is available online, along a very useful list of links to resources for managers of research computing teams: https://www.researchcomputingteams.org/Bioinfo22. The keynote focused on the soft skills and people management (both in the team and expectations of collaborators). Following the keynote, there was a panel on core facility management that had the participation of Jonathan Dursi, Shannan Ho Sui (Harvard), George Bell (Whitehead Institute), Patricia Carvajal (EMBL-EBI), and Ryan Dale (NIH). The panel had a discussion about remote work, job titles and career progression as well the advice that they would have for new managers. Then we had brief discussions on options for remote and hybrid training, and the dilemma for managers to keep honing their technical skills when the job demands focus on other skills. A message to new managers was: becoming a manager means your job will change!

If you want to connect with other core facility staff and managers from around the world, please join our Slack group! Look for the #ismb channel and join the conversation, or explore all our other channels. Please visit: http://bioinfo-core.org/index.php/Main_Page for more information about our group and past workshop sessions!
These talks are now available on ISMB On-Demand.
ISCB Town Hall:
The first full day of ISMB featured a plethora of goings on being capped off with a well attended and informative ISCB Town Hall where the newly voted on Board of Directors were announced:

Bruno Gaeta
Nomi Harris
Thomas Lengauer
Alejandra Medina-Rivera
Xuegong Zhang

Congratulations to the incoming board members!
 

Tips & Tricks:

If you are a speaker or poster presenter please be sure to review details here: https://www.iscb.org/ismb2022-general/presenter-information#join

To all virtual attendees: we all need a break and caffeine fix.  When a session ends, take a breather, but please remember to join a new session from the schedule!

When in doubt, always refresh!

Unable to screen share while virtually presenting?  Security upgrades can prevent screen sharing for unregistered apps - try adding the web browser to the list of permitted apps.

Updates happen -  for best experience, please re login to browser at the start of every day and session!

If you are unnable to connect, log out and login with a magic link (not password).

For the best virtual experience at ISMB 2022 we recommend using the latest version of Chrome (https://www.google.com/chrome/).

As a reminder masks are required for in-person attendance at ISMB 2022 as outlined at: https://www.iscb.org/ismb2022-general/health-and-safety

 

Navigate ISMB 2022 Like a Pro:

If it's your first time visiting the ISMB 2022 site you can enter your email (SAME EMAIL USED TO REGISTER) to receive a magic link to log in.  Once you've logged in you can update your profile and set a password for future events or continue using magic links. Attendance of the sessions during ISMB 2022 will require login. When viewing the conference platform on Chrome, the login button will be located in the upper-right hand corner. If you encounter any issues, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Get the Conference App! You can also experience ISMB 2022 with the JUNO Live App available from Android https://play.google.com/  or Apple iO https://www.apple.com/ca/app-store/

 
Tuesday, July 12: Highlights & Reminders


7:30AM - 8:30AM:  Virtual Poster Session (via Conference Platform)
8:30AM - 8:45AM:  Morning Welcome &  ISCB Outstanding Contributions Award Presentation to Reinhard Schneider 
8:45AM - 9:45AM: Distinguished Keynote Speaker: Aïda OuangraouaGene evolution at transcript level: challenges and existing solutions
9:45AM - 10:30AM:  Caffeinate and Connect with exhibitors (Grand Terrace)
10:30AM - 12:30PM: Morning Sessions: TransMed COSIHitSeq COSINetBio COSIiRNACAMDAVarI COSIEducation COSISpecial Track: NIH-NSF Smart Health ProgramSpecial Session: Digital AgricultureTechnology Track
12:30PM - 2:30PM:  Lunch and Ideation Hall (Poster Session A) 
2:30PM - 3:30PM: Morning Sessions Continue
3:30PM - 4:00PM:  Caffeinate and Connect with exhibitors 
4:00PM - 6:00PM:  Sessions Continue: 
TransMed COSIHitSeq COSINetBio COSIiRNACAMDAVarI COSIEducation COSISpecial Session: Genome Privacy and SecuritySpecial Session: Digital AgricultureTechnology Track
6:15PM - 7:15PM:  Birds of a Feather (BoF): 
Strategies for Team Science in the Age of Hybrid and Remote Work
Bioinformatics in the cloud for newcomers
6:15PM - 7:15PM:  Virtual Poster Session (via Conference Platform)

 

Thank you to our generous sponsors!

 
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Welcome to ISMB 2022!

Welcome to ISMB 2022! Wether joining us in-person in Madison or virtually, it is now time to let your curiosity take over, discover the latest research in the field and get ready to connect, collaborate, and engage! 

We want to advise you there is a large art event, Art on the Square, being held in the city to include areas adjacent to the Monona Terrace Conference Center. This includes displays immediately outside the main entrance of the center at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd and Wilson Street.  Access to the center is still available but a little hard to see due to the event and the white tents used by the artists.  To access the center, continue down the walkway and enter the building through the glass doors.  Proceed one level down to the main area of the conference. 

             

Additionally, the Art on the Square event is scheduled to close at 5 PM on Sunday.   This may mean that vendors may be working to pack up their areas at the time you are to join us for the opening Keynote.  Please allow a little extra time.  Thank you for your patience and we look forward to a great conference. 
 

Things To Know
If you are a speaker or poster presenter please be sure to review details here:
https://www.iscb.org/ismb2022-general/presenter-information#join

As a reminder masks are required for in-person attendance at ISMB 2022 as outlined at: https://www.iscb.org/ismb2022-general/health-and-safety

 

Navigate ISMB 2022 Like a Pro:
For the best virtual experience at ISMB 2022 we recommend using the latest version of Chrome (https://www.google.com/chrome/).

If it's your first time visiting the ISMB 2022 site you can enter your email (SAME EMAIL USED TO REGISTER) to receive a magic link to log in.  Once you've logged in you can update your profile and set a password for future events or continue using magic links. Attendance of the sessions during ISMB 2022 will require login. When viewing the conference platform on Chrome, the login button will be located in the upper-right hand corner. If you encounter any issues, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Get the Conference App! You can also experience ISMB 2022 with the JUNO Live App available from Android https://play.google.com/  or Apple iO https://www.apple.com/ca/app-store/

 
 
Sunday, July 10: Highlights & Reminders


11:00AM - 6:00PM:  In-person Tutorials
1:00PM - 3:00PM:  Protein Codeathon: Introduction
4:00PM - 6:00PM:  Exhibition Open (Room: Grand Terrace)
6:15PM - 6:30PM:  ISMB 2022 Conference Welcome (Room: Madison ABCD)
6:30PM - 7:30PM:  Distinguished Keynote Speaker: Tanya Berger-WolfImageomics: Images as the Source of Information about Life
7:30PM - 9:00PM:  Networking Reception - Monona Terrace Rooftop Garden - Level Five

 

Thank you to our generous sponsors!

 
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ISMB 2022

Day 1, Highlights & Recap

Day 1: Highlights & Recap!

Thank you to everyone for joining us for the opening of ISMB 2022.  It was great to welcome attendees from all over the world in-person & virtually.  After two years, there's bound to be some dust to shake off.  We greatly appreciate your patience as we worked through some technical issues.  We hope you found the opening to be full of innovation and stellar science and amazing opportunities!  See you tomorrow for another engaging and smoother day!

Highlights



Dr. Tanya Berger-Wolf opened the conference with a fascinating talk on imageomics, using images as a source of information about wildlife populations. 
 
Images are the most abundant source of information we have around us and we can make the most use of this information by putting technology to work for us. Using computers to look at images will not only allow us to look at more images, but to look at images more carefully. Computers are able to see things that the human eye can’t see—color variations, subtleties of patterns, minute shape differences—and are thus able to better identify important characteristics of organisms down to the individual level. 
 
This ability to identify individual characteristics has been crucial to the workings of Dr. Berger-Wolf and colleagues’ Wildbook project, the goal of which is to improve animal monitoring procedures and develop innovative solutions to prevent extinction of species. 
 
With the help of technology, the data extracted from the massive amount of images available from natural history collections, camera traps, field researchers, and citizen scientists (to name a few), provide information allowing conservationists and researchers to better understand migration patterns and conservation status of many species whose conservation data is currently classified as deficient.
 
The budding field of imageomics is an exciting, computational approach to assessing and quantifying biological traits, and is sure to play a key role in the development of new hypotheses, as well as in the development of conservation and wildlife policy decisions.

This talk is now available on ISMB On-Demand.

 

Tips & Tricks:

If you are unnable to connect, log out and login with a magic link (not password).

If you are a speaker or poster presenter please be sure to review details here:
https://www.iscb.org/ismb2022-general/presenter-information#join

As a reminder masks are required for in-person attendance at ISMB 2022 as outlined at: https://www.iscb.org/ismb2022-general/health-and-safety

 

Navigate ISMB 2022 Like a Pro:

For the best virtual experience at ISMB 2022 we recommend using the latest version of Chrome (https://www.google.com/chrome/).

If it's your first time visiting the ISMB 2022 site you can enter your email (SAME EMAIL USED TO REGISTER) to receive a magic link to log in.  Once you've logged in you can update your profile and set a password for future events or continue using magic links. Attendance of the sessions during ISMB 2022 will require login. When viewing the conference platform on Chrome, the login button will be located in the upper-right hand corner. If you encounter any issues, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Get the Conference App! You can also experience ISMB 2022 with the JUNO Live App available from Android https://play.google.com/  or Apple iO https://www.apple.com/ca/app-store/

 
Monday, July 11: Highlights & Reminders


7:30AM - 8:30AM:  Virtual Poster Session (via Conference Platform)
8:30AM - 8:45AM:  Morning Welcome & Introduction of ISCB Distinguished Fellows 2022 
8:45AM - 9:45AM: ISCB Overton Prize Keynote: Po-Ru LohHaplotype-informed discovery of hidden genetic variants influencing human traits
9:45AM - 10:30AM:  Caffeinate and Connect with exhibitors (Grand Terrace)
10:30AM - 12:30PM: Morning Sessions: SysModFunctionGeneral Computational Biology TalksiRNACAMDABioinfo Core WorkshopSpecial Session: Computational ImmunologyCompMSText MiningJunior Principal Investigators
12:30PM - 2:30PM:  Lunch and Ideation Hall (Poster Session A) 
2:30PM - 3:30PM: Afternoon Sessions: SysModFunctionGeneral Computational Biology TalksiRNACAMDAWEB 2022Special Session: Computational ImmunologyCompMSText MiningTechnology Track
3:30PM - 4:00PM:  Caffeinate and Connect with exhibitors 
4:00PM - 6:00PM:  Afternoon Sessions Continue
6:15PM - 7:30PM:  ISCB Town Hall (Lecture Hall, Level Four)
6:15PM - 7:15PM:  Virtual Poster Session (via Conference Platform)

 

Thank you to our generous sponsors!

 
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Polls are Open!

ISCB members have the privilege to nominate and elect members of the ISCB community to hold leadership positions. It is your voice as a member of this prestigious organization to elect these officer positions.  You are encouraged to take a moment to read the candidate statements and cast your vote
 

Cast your ballot for President-elect and Vice Prisdent

Current ISCB Officers:
Christine Oregno, Alex Bateman, Nicola Mulder, Michelle Brazas, Janet Kelso, Yana Bromberg

GET TO KNOW THE CANDIDATES & CAST YOUR VOTE
*ISCB members in good standing receive one vote for each open position.  To access the ballot, log into My ISCB and click on the link provided in this email or the ISCB Election link in the left-hand menu. 
 
The ISCB Communities of Special Interest (COSIs) form the backbone of the ISMB 2022 scientific Programme.  Browse the exciting science that will be presented at the conference.

Registration is still open and includes exclusive access to on-demand content.  
Worried you will miss something because there are so many?  We have you covered!

All content presented live will be archived for on-demand viewing. Wether in-person or virtual, you will never miss a thing with your exclusive access to the content well beyond the conference days!  And that is a feat in itself as we know with more than 500 talks in ten concurrent sessions it’s hard to see live all the science that one may want to see.

Start planning your ISMB 2022 experience today - review the COSI tracks, programme and register today.
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
 

Looking for summer event for your lab?  Check out the ISCB Laboratory Member Rate: Available to ISCB Member Institutions or Labs. This is a new ISCB membership type effective March, 2021. See ISCB membership categories at: https://www.iscb.org/become-a-member

**Laboratory Rate: Available to a group or lab where the lead registrant is an ISCB member. The additional 7 group registrants are not required to be members of ISCB. This registration category includes ISCB membership for any combination of up to 7 students or postdocs as part of the group.

REGISTER TO ATTEND
 
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Don't miss the hybrid bioinformatics conference of the year - experience it in-person or virtually.

Registration is still open and includes exclusive access to on-demand content.  
All content presented live will be archived for on-demand viewing. Wether in-person or virtual, you will never miss a thing with your exclusive access to the content well beyond the conference days!  And that is a feat in itself as we know with more than 500 talks in ten concurrent sessions it’s hard to see live all the science that one may want to see.

Start planning your ISMB 2022 experience today - review the COSI tracks, programme and register today.
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
 

Looking for summer event for your lab?  Check out the ISCB Laboratory Member Rate: Available to ISCB Member Institutions or Labs. This is a new ISCB membership type effective March, 2021. See ISCB membership categories at: https://www.iscb.org/become-a-member

**Laboratory Rate: Available to a group or lab where the lead registrant is an ISCB member. The additional 7 group registrants are not required to be members of ISCB. This registration category includes ISCB membership for any combination of up to 7 students or postdocs as part of the group.

REGISTER TO ATTEND
 
ISCB is committed to sustainable environmental practices within its organizational operations as we plan and execute Society’s programs. You can help our efforts by taking the ISCB Green Pledge. Participants will be recognized during the conference and automatically entered into a prize drawing.

Attending Virtually? You can still support our environmentally sustainable efforts by pledging the virtual ISCB Green Pledge! Participants will be recognized during the conference on the virtual platform.
SIGN THE PLEDGE
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