A bioinformatics potpourri

© 2018 The Author(s). The 16th International Conference on Bioinformatics (InCoB) was held at Tsinghua University, Shenzhen from September 20 to 22, 2017. The annual conference of the Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Network featured six keynotes, two invited talks, a panel discussion on big data driven bioinformatics and precision medicine, and 66 oral presentations of accepted research articles or posters. Fifty-seven articles comprising a topic assortment of algorithms, biomolecular networks, cancer and disease informatics, drug-target interactions and drug efficacy, gene regulation and expression, imaging, immunoinformatics, metagenomics, next generation sequencing for genomics and transcriptomics, ontologies, post-translational modification, and structural bioinformatics are the subject of this editorial for the InCoB2017 supplement issues in BMC Genomics, BMC Bioinformatics, BMC Systems Biology and BMC Medical Genomics. New Delhi will be the location of InCoB2018, scheduled for September 26-28, 2018

GIW and InCoB, two premier bioinformatics conferences in Asia with a combined 40 years of history

Knowledge discovery in bioinformatics thrives on joint and inclusive efforts of stakeholders. Similarly, knowledge dissemination is expected to be more effective and scalable through joint efforts. Therefore, the International Conference on Bioinformatics (InCoB) and the International Conference on Genome Informatics (GIW) were organized as a joint conference for the first time in 13 years of coexistence. The Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNet) and the Japanese Society for Bioinformatics (JSBi) collaborated to host GIW/InCoB2015 in Tokyo, September 9-11, 2015. The joint endeavour yielded 51 research articles published in seven journals, 78 poster and 89 oral presentations, showcasing bioinformatics research in the Asia-Pacific region. Encouraged by the results and reduced organizational overheads, APBioNet will collaborate with other bioinformatics societies in organizing co-located bioinformatics research and training meetings in the future. InCoB2016 will be hosted in Singapore, September 21-23, 2016