PROTEIN INTERACTIONS AND DISEASE

摘要

In 2003, the US National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) articulated grand challenges for the genomics community in which the translation of genome-based knowledge into disease understanding, diagnostics, prognostics, drug response and clinical therapy is one of the three fundamental directions ("genomics to biology," "genomics to health" and "genomics to society"). At the same time the National Institutes of Health (NIH) laid out a similar roadmap for biomedical sciences. Both the NHGRI grand challenges and the NIH road-map recognized bioinformatics as an integral part in the future of life sciences. While this recognition is gratifying for the bioinformatics community, its task now is to answer the challenge of making a direct impact to the medical science and benefiting human health. Innovative use of informatics in the "translation from bench to bedside" becomes a key for bioinformaticians. In 2005, the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (PSB) first solicited papers related to one aspect of this challenge, protein interactions and disease, which directly addresses computational approaches in search for the molecular basis of disease. The goal of the session was to bring together scientists interested in both bioinformatics and medical sciences to present their research progress. The session generated great interest resulting in a number of high quality papers and testable hypothesis regarding the involvement of proteins in various disease pathways. This year, the papers accepted for the session on Protein Interactions and Disease at PSB 2007 follow the same trend.