동시조절 유전적 상호작용 발굴을 위한 하이퍼그래프 모델

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 협동과정 생물정보학전공, 2014. 2. 장병탁.A comprehensive understanding of biological systems requires the analysis of higher-order interactions among many genomic factors. Various genomic factors cooperate to affect biological processes including cancer occurrence, progression and metastasis. However, the complexity of genomic interactions presents a major barrier to identifying their co-regulatory roles and functional effects. Thus, this dissertation addresses the problem of analyzing complex relationships among many genomic factors in biological processes including cancers. We propose a hypergraph approach for modeling, learning and extracting: explicitly modeling higher-order genomic interactions, efficiently learning based on evolutionary methods, and effectively extracting biological knowledge from the model. A hypergraph model is a higher-order graphical model explicitly representing complex relationships among many variables from high-dimensional data. This property allows the proposed model to be suitable for the analysis of biological and medical phenomena characterizing higher-order interactions between various genomic factors. This dissertation proposes the advanced hypergraph-based models in terms of the learning methods and the model structures to analyze large-scale biological data focusing on identifying co-regulatory genomic interactions on a genome-wide level. We introduce an evolutionary approach based on information-theoretic criteria into the learning mechanisms for efficiently searching a huge problem space reflecting higher-order interactions between factors. This evolutionary learning is explained from the perspective of a sequential Bayesian sampling framework. Also, a hierarchy is introduced into the hypergraph model for modeling hierarchical genomic relationships. This hierarchical structure allows the hypergraph model to explicitly represent gene regulatory circuits as functional blocks or groups across the level of epigenetic, transcriptional, and post-transcriptional regulation. Moreover, the proposed graph-analyzing method is able to grasp the global structures of biological systems such as genomic modules and regulatory networks by analyzing the learned model structures. The proposed model is applied to analyzing cancer genomics considered as a major topic in current biology and medicine. We show that the performance of our model competes with or outperforms state-of-the-art models on multiple cancer genomic data. Furthermore, the propose model is capable of discovering new or hidden patterns as candidates of potential gene regulatory circuits such as gene modules, miRNA-mRNA networks, and multiple genomic interactions, associated with the specific cancer. The results of these analysis can provide several crucial evidences that can pave the way for identifying unknown functions in the cancer system. The proposed hypergraph model will contribute to elucidating core regulatory mechanisms and to comprehensive understanding of biological processes including cancers.Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .i 1 Introduction 1.1 Background and Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 Problems to be Addressed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.3 The Proposed Approach and its Contribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.4 Organization of the Dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2 Related Work 2.1 Analysis of Co-Regulatory Genomic Interactions from Omics Data . . 9 2.2 Probabilistic Graphical Models for Biological Problems . . . . . . . . 11 2.2.1 Bayesian Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.2.2 Markov Random Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.2.3 Hidden Markov Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2.3 Higher-order Graphical Models for Biological Problems . . . . . . . . 16 2.3.1 Higher-Order Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 2.3.2 Hypergraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 3 Hypergraph Classifiers for Identifying Prognostic Modules in Cancer 3.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 3.2 Analyzing Gene Modules for Cancer Prognosis Prediction . . . . . . 24 3.3 Hypergraph Classifiers for Identifying Cancer Gene Modules . . . . 26 3.3.1 Hypergraph Classifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 3.3.2 Bayesian Evolutionary Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 3.3.3 Bayesian Evolutionary Learning for Hypergraph Classifiers . 29 3.4 Predicting Cancer Clinical Outcomes Based on Gene Modules . . . . 34 3.4.1 Data and Experimental Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 3.4.2 Prediction Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 3.4.3 Model Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 3.4.4 Identification of Prognostic Gene Modules . . . . . . . . . . . 44 3.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 4 Hypergraph-based Models for Constructing Higher-Order miRNA-mRNA Interaction Networks in Cancer 4.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 4.2 Analyzing Relationships between miRNAs and mRNAs from Heterogeneous Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 4.3 Hypergraph-based Models for Identifying miRNA-mRNA Interactions 57 4.3.1 Hypergraph-based Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 4.3.2 Learning Hypergraph-based Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 4.3.3 Building Interaction Networks from Hypergraphs . . . . . . . 64 4.4 Constructing miRNA-mRNA Interaction Networks Based on Higher- Order Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 4.4.1 Data and Experimental Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 4.4.2 Classification Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 4.4.3 Model Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 CONTENTS iii 4.4.4 Constructed Higher-Order miRNA-mRNA Interaction Networks in Prostate Cancer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 4.4.5 Functional Analysis of the Constructed Interaction Networks 78 4.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 5 Hierarchical Hypergraphs for Identifying Higher-Order Genomic Interactions in Multilevel Regulation 5.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 5.2 Analyzing Epigenetic and Genetic Interactions from Multiple Genomic Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 5.3 Hierarchical Hypergraphs for Identifying Epigenetic and Genetic Interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 5.3.1 Hierarchical Hypergraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 5.3.2 Learning Hierarchical Hypergraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 5.4 Identifying Higher-Order Genomic Interactions in Multilevel Regulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 5.4.1 Data and Experimental Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 5.4.2 Identified Higher-Order miRNA-mRNA Interactions Induced by DNA Methylation in Ovarian Cancer . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 5.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 6 Concluding Remarks 6.1 Summary of the Dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 6.2 Directions for Further Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 초록 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132Docto

Multifaceted enrichment analysis of RNA-RNA crosstalk reveals cooperating micro-societies in human colorectal cancer

Alterations in the balance of mRNA and microRNA (miRNA) expression profiles contribute to the onset and development of colorectal cancer. The regulatory functions of individual miRNA-gene pairs are widely acknowledged, but group effects are largely unexplored. We performed an integrative analysis of mRNA–miRNA and miRNA–miRNA interactions using high-throughput mRNA and miRNA expression profiles obtained from matched specimens of human colorectal cancer tissue and adjacent non- tumorous mucosa. This investigation resulted in a hypernetwork-based model, whose functional back- bone was fulfilled by tight micro-societies of miR- NAs. These proved to modulate several genes that are known to control a set of significantly enriched cancer-enhancer and cancer-protection biological processes, and that an array of upstream regulatory analyses demonstrated to be dependent on miR-145, a cell cycle and MAPK signalling cascade master regulator. In conclusion, we reveal miRNA-gene clusters and gene families with close functional relationships and highlight the role of miR-145 as potent upstream regulator of a complex RNA–RNA crosstalk, which mechanistically modulates several signalling path- ways and regulatory circuits that when deranged are relevant to the changes occurring in colorectal carcinogenesis

RNAi and miRNA in Viral Infections and Cancers

Since the first report of RNA interference (RNAi) less than a decade ago, this type of molecular intervention has been introduced to repress gene expression in vitro and also for in vivo studies in mammals. Understanding the mechanisms of action of synthetic small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) underlies use as therapeutic agents in the areas of cancer and viral infection. Recent studies have also promoted different theories about cell-specific targeting of siRNAs. Design and delivery strategies for successful treatment of human diseases are becomingmore established and relationships between miRNA and RNAi pathways have been revealed as virus-host cell interactions. Although both are well conserved in plants, invertebrates and mammals, there is also variabilityand a more complete understanding of differences will be needed for optimal application. RNA interference (RNAi) is rapid, cheap and selective in complex biological systems and has created new insight sin fields of cancer research, genetic disorders, virology and drug design. Our knowledge about the role of miRNAs and siRNAs pathways in virus-host cell interactions in virus infected cells is incomplete. There are different viral diseases but few antiviral drugs are available. For example, acyclovir for herpes viruses, alpha-interferon for hepatitis C and B viruses and anti-retroviral for HIV are accessible. Also cancer is obviously an important target for siRNA-based therapies, but the main problem in cancer therapy is targeting metastatic cells which spread from the original tumor. There are also other possible reservations and problems that might delay or even hinder siRNA-based therapies for the treatment of certain conditions; however, this remains the most promising approach for a wide range of diseases. Clearly, more studies must be done to allow efficient delivery and better understanding of unwanted side effects of siRNA-based therapies. In this review miRNA and RNAi biology, experimental design, anti-viral and anti-cancer effects are discussed

Modulation of interleukin-8 protein expression by micro-RNA 181 in human pulpal fibroblasts

MicroRNAs (miRNA) regulate the synthesis of cytokines in response to Toll-like receptor (TLR) activation. miRNA-181 is differentially expressed in pulpitis, which represents an immune reaction to bacteria and is also the most common cause of emergency room visits due to dental pain. We employed an in-vitro model to determine the role of miRNA in pulpitis, which has been shown in several studies to overexpress Interleukin-8 (IL-8). Primary human dental pulp fibroblasts (HDPF) were stimulated with the TLR-2/4 agonist P. gingivalis lipopolysaccharide. An inversely proportional relationship between IL-8 and miRNA-181a was observed, which was validated by in-silico identification of a miR-181a binding site on the 3'UTR of IL-8 and by dual-luciferase assays. This is the very first report demonstrating miR-181a regulation of IL-8. Considering that both mir-181 and IL-8 have been implicated in various systemic conditions, the findings of this study extend well beyond the confines of Endodontics.Master of Scienc

동적 멀티모달 데이터 학습을 위한 심층 하이퍼네트워크

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 전기·컴퓨터공학부, 2015. 2. 장병탁.Recent advancements in information communication technology has led the explosive increase of data. Dissimilar to traditional data which are structured and unimodal, in particular, the characteristics of recent data generated from dynamic environments are summarized as high-dimensionality, multimodality, and structurelessness as well as huge-scale size. The learning from non-stationary multimodal data is essential for solving many difficult problems in artificial intelligence. However, despite many successful reports, existing machine learning methods have mainly focused on solving practical problems represented by large-scaled but static databases, such as image classification, tagging, and retrieval. Hypernetworks are a probabilistic graphical model representing empirical distribution, using a hypergraph structure that is a large collection of many hyperedges encoding the associations among variables. This representation allows the model to be suitable for characterizing the complex relationships between features with a population of building blocks. However, since a hypernetwork is represented by a huge combinatorial feature space, the model requires a large number of hyperedges for handling the multimodal large-scale data and thus faces the scalability problem. In this dissertation, we propose a deep architecture of hypernetworks for dealing with the scalability issue for learning from multimodal data with non-stationary properties such as videos, i.e., deep hypernetworks. Deep hypernetworks handle the issues through the abstraction at multiple levels using a hierarchy of multiple hypergraphs. We use a stochastic method based on Monte-Carlo simulation, a graph MC, for efficiently constructing hypergraphs representing the empirical distribution of the observed data. The structure of a deep hypernetwork continuously changes as the learning proceeds, and this flexibility is contrasted to other deep learning models. The proposed model incrementally learns from the data, thus handling the nonstationary properties such as concept drift. The abstract representations in the learned models play roles of multimodal knowledge on data, which are used for the content-aware crossmodal transformation including vision-language conversion. We view the vision-language conversion as a machine translation, and thus formulate the vision-language translation in terms of the statistical machine translation. Since the knowledge on the video stories are used for translation, we call this story-aware vision-language translation. We evaluate deep hypernetworks on large-scale vision-language multimodal data including benmarking datasets and cartoon video series. The experimental results show the deep hypernetworks effectively represent visual-linguistic information abstracted at multiple levels of the data contents as well as the associations between vision and language. We explain how the introduction of a hierarchy deals with the scalability and non-stationary properties. In addition, we present the story-aware vision-language translation on cartoon videos by generating scene images from sentences and descriptive subtitles from scene images. Furthermore, we discuss the meaning of our model for lifelong learning and the improvement direction for achieving human-level artificial intelligence.1 Introduction 1.1 Background and Motivation 1.2 Problems to be Addressed 1.3 The Proposed Approach and its Contribution 1.4 Organization of the Dissertation 2 RelatedWork 2.1 Multimodal Leanring 2.2 Models for Learning from Multimodal Data 2.2.1 Topic Model-Based Multimodal Leanring 2.2.2 Deep Network-based Multimodal Leanring 2.3 Higher-Order Graphical Models 2.3.1 Hypernetwork Models 2.3.2 Bayesian Evolutionary Learning of Hypernetworks 3 Multimodal Hypernetworks for Text-to-Image Retrievals 3.1 Overview 3.2 Hypernetworks for Multimodal Associations 3.2.1 Multimodal Hypernetworks 3.2.2 Incremental Learning of Multimodal Hypernetworks 3.3 Text-to-Image Crossmodal Inference 3.3.1 Representatation of Textual-Visual Data 3.3.2 Text-to-Image Query Expansion 3.4 Text-to-Image Retrieval via Multimodal Hypernetworks 3.4.1 Data and Experimental Settings 3.4.2 Text-to-Image Retrieval Performance 3.4.3 Incremental Learning for Text-to-Image Retrieval 3.5 Summary 4 Deep Hypernetworks for Multimodal Cocnept Learning from Cartoon Videos 4.1 Overview 4.2 Visual-Linguistic Concept Representation of Catoon Videos 4.3 Deep Hypernetworks for Modeling Visual-Linguistic Concepts 4.3.1 Sparse Population Coding 4.3.2 Deep Hypernetworks for Concept Hierarchies 4.3.3 Implication of Deep Hypernetworks on Cognitive Modeling 4.4 Learning of Deep Hypernetworks 4.4.1 Problem Space of Deep Hypernetworks 4.4.2 Graph Monte-Carlo Simulation 4.4.3 Learning of Concept Layers 4.4.4 Incremental Concept Construction 4.5 Incremental Concept Construction from Catoon Videos 4.5.1 Data Description and Parameter Setup 4.5.2 Concept Representation and Development 4.5.3 Character Classification via Concept Learning 4.5.4 Vision-Language Conversion via Concept Learning 4.6 Summary 5 Story-awareVision-LanguageTranslation usingDeepConcept Hiearachies 5.1 Overview 5.2 Vision-Language Conversion as a Machine Translation 5.2.1 Statistical Machine Translation 5.2.2 Vision-Language Translation 5.3 Story-aware Vision-Language Translation using Deep Concept Hierarchies 5.3.1 Story-aware Vision-Language Translation 5.3.2 Vision-to-Language Translation 5.3.3 Language-to-Vision Translation 5.4 Story-aware Vision-Language Translation on Catoon Videos 5.4.1 Data and Experimental Setting 5.4.2 Scene-to-Sentence Generation 5.4.3 Sentence-to-Scene Generation 5.4.4 Visual-Linguistic Story Summarization of Cartoon Videos 5.5 Summary 6 Concluding Remarks 6.1 Summary of the Dissertation 6.2 Directions for Further Research Bibliography 한글초록Docto

Higher-order interactions in single-cell gene expression: towards a cybergenetic semantics of cell state

Finding and understanding patterns in gene expression guides our understanding of living organisms, their development, and diseases, but is a challenging and high-dimensional problem as there are many molecules involved. One way to learn about the structure of a gene regulatory network is by studying the interdependencies among its constituents in transcriptomic data sets. These interdependencies could be arbitrarily complex, but almost all current models of gene regulation contain pairwise interactions only, despite experimental evidence existing for higher-order regulation that cannot be decomposed into pairwise mechanisms. I set out to capture these higher-order dependencies in single-cell RNA-seq data using two different approaches. First, I fitted maximum entropy (or Ising) models to expression data by training restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs). On simulated data, RBMs faithfully reproduced both pairwise and third-order interactions. I then trained RBMs on 37 genes from a scRNA-seq data set of 70k astrocytes from an embryonic mouse. While pairwise and third-order interactions were revealed, the estimates contained a strong omitted variable bias, and there was no statistically sound and tractable way to quantify the uncertainty in the estimates. As a result I next adopted a model-free approach. Estimating model-free interactions (MFIs) in single-cell gene expression data required a quasi-causal graph of conditional dependencies among the genes, which I inferred with an MCMC graph-optimisation algorithm on an initial estimate found by the Peter-Clark algorithm. As the estimates are model-free, MFIs can be interpreted either as mechanistic relationships between the genes, or as substructures in the cell population. On simulated data, MFIs revealed synergy and higher-order mechanisms in various logical and causal dynamics more accurately than any correlation- or information-based quantities. I then estimated MFIs among 1,000 genes, at up to seventh-order, in 20k neurons and 20k astrocytes from two different mouse brain scRNA-seq data sets: one developmental, and one adolescent. I found strong evidence for up to fifth-order interactions, and the MFIs mostly disambiguated direct from indirect regulation by preferentially coupling causally connected genes, whereas correlations persisted across causal chains. Validating the predicted interactions against the Pathway Commons database, gene ontology annotations, and semantic similarity, I found that pairwise MFIs contained different but a similar amount of mechanistic information relative to networks based on correlation. Furthermore, third-order interactions provided evidence of combinatorial regulation by transcription factors and immediate early genes. I then switched focus from mechanism to population structure. Each significant MFI can be assigned a set of single cells that most influence its value. Hierarchical clustering of the MFIs by cell assignment revealed substructures in the cell population corresponding to diverse cell states. This offered a new, purely data-driven view on cell states because the inferred states are not required to localise in gene expression space. Across the four data sets, I found 69 significant and biologically interpretable cell states, where only 9 could be obtained by standard approaches. I identified immature neurons among developing astrocytes and radial glial cells, D1 and D2 medium spiny neurons, D1 MSN subtypes, and cell-cycle related states present across four data sets. I further found evidence for states defined by genes associated to neuropeptide signalling, neuronal activity, myelin metabolism, and genomic imprinting. MFIs thus provide a new, statistically sound method to detect substructure in single-cell gene expression data, identifying cell types, subtypes, or states that can be delocalised in gene expression space and whose hierarchical structure provides a new view on the semantics of cell state. The estimation of the quasi-causal graph, the MFIs, and inference of the associated states is implemented as a publicly available Nextflow pipeline called Stator

Text Mining for Pathway Curation

Biolog:innen untersuchen häufig Pathways, Netzwerke von Interaktionen zwischen Proteinen und Genen mit einer spezifischen Funktion. Neue Erkenntnisse über Pathways werden in der Regel zunächst in Publikationen veröffentlicht und dann in strukturierter Form in Lehrbüchern, Datenbanken oder mathematischen Modellen weitergegeben. Deren Kuratierung kann jedoch aufgrund der hohen Anzahl von Publikationen sehr aufwendig sein. In dieser Arbeit untersuchen wir wie Text Mining Methoden die Kuratierung unterstützen können. Wir stellen PEDL vor, ein Machine-Learning-Modell zur Extraktion von Protein-Protein-Assoziationen (PPAs) aus biomedizinischen Texten. PEDL verwendet Distant Supervision und vortrainierte Sprachmodelle, um eine höhere Genauigkeit als vergleichbare Methoden zu erreichen. Eine Evaluation durch Expert:innen bestätigt die Nützlichkeit von PEDLs für Pathway-Kurator:innen. Außerdem stellen wir PEDL+ vor, ein Kommandozeilen-Tool, mit dem auch Nicht-Expert:innen PPAs effizient extrahieren können. Drei Kurator:innen bewerten 55,6 % bis 79,6 % der von PEDL+ gefundenen PPAs als nützlich für ihre Arbeit. Die große Anzahl von PPAs, die durch Text Mining identifiziert werden, kann für Forscher:innen überwältigend sein. Um hier Abhilfe zu schaffen, stellen wir PathComplete vor, ein Modell, das nützliche Erweiterungen eines Pathways vorschlägt. Es ist die erste Pathway-Extension-Methode, die auf überwachtem maschinellen Lernen basiert. Unsere Experimente zeigen, dass PathComplete wesentlich genauer ist als existierende Methoden. Schließlich schlagen wir eine Methode vor, um Pathways mit komplexen Ereignisstrukturen zu erweitern. Hier übertrifft unsere neue Methode zur konditionalen Graphenmodifikation die derzeit beste Methode um 13-24% Genauigkeit in drei Benchmarks. Insgesamt zeigen unsere Ergebnisse, dass Deep Learning basierte Informationsextraktion eine vielversprechende Grundlage für die Unterstützung von Pathway-Kurator:innen ist.Biological knowledge often involves understanding the interactions between molecules, such as proteins and genes, that form functional networks called pathways. New knowledge about pathways is typically communicated through publications and later condensed into structured formats such as textbooks, pathway databases or mathematical models. However, curating updated pathway models can be labour-intensive due to the growing volume of publications. This thesis investigates text mining methods to support pathway curation. We present PEDL (Protein-Protein-Association Extraction with Deep Language Models), a machine learning model designed to extract protein-protein associations (PPAs) from biomedical text. PEDL uses distant supervision and pre-trained language models to achieve higher accuracy than the state of the art. An expert evaluation confirms its usefulness for pathway curators. We also present PEDL+, a command-line tool that allows non-expert users to efficiently extract PPAs. When applied to pathway curation tasks, 55.6% to 79.6% of PEDL+ extractions were found useful by curators. The large number of PPAs identified by text mining can be overwhelming for researchers. To help, we present PathComplete, a model that suggests potential extensions to a pathway. It is the first method based on supervised machine learning for this task, using transfer learning from pathway databases. Our evaluations show that PathComplete significantly outperforms existing methods. Finally, we generalise pathway extension from PPAs to more realistic complex events. Here, our novel method for conditional graph modification outperforms the current best by 13-24% accuracy on three benchmarks. We also present a new dataset for event-based pathway extension. Overall, our results show that deep learning-based information extraction is a promising basis for supporting pathway curators

Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing 2023

The Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (PSB) 2023 is an international, multidisciplinary conference for the presentation and discussion of current research in the theory and application of computational methods in problems of biological significance. Presentations are rigorously peer reviewed and are published in an archival proceedings volume. PSB 2023 will be held on January 3-7, 2023 in Kohala Coast, Hawaii. Tutorials and workshops will be offered prior to the start of the conference.PSB 2023 will bring together top researchers from the US, the Asian Pacific nations, and around the world to exchange research results and address open issues in all aspects of computational biology. It is a forum for the presentation of work in databases, algorithms, interfaces, visualization, modeling, and other computational methods, as applied to biological problems, with emphasis on applications in data-rich areas of molecular biology.The PSB has been designed to be responsive to the need for critical mass in sub-disciplines within biocomputing. For that reason, it is the only meeting whose sessions are defined dynamically each year in response to specific proposals. PSB sessions are organized by leaders of research in biocomputing's 'hot topics.' In this way, the meeting provides an early forum for serious examination of emerging methods and approaches in this rapidly changing field