Discovering the intelligence in molecular biology.
The Third International Conference on Intelligent Systems in Molecular Biology was truly an outstanding event. Computational methods in molecular biology have reached a new level of maturity and utility, resulting in many high-impact applications. The success of this meeting bodes well for the rapid and continuing development of computational methods, intelligent systems and information-based approaches for the biosciences. The basic technology, originally most often applied to 'feasibility' problems, is now dealing effectively with the most difficult real-world problems. Significant progress has been made in understanding protein-structure information, structural classification, and how functional information and the relevant features of active-site geometry can be gleaned from structures by automated computational approaches. The value and limits of homology-based methods, and the ability to classify proteins by structure in the absence of homology, have reached a new level of sophistication. New methods for covariation analysis in the folding of large structures such as RNAs have shown remarkably good results, indicating the long-term potential to understand very complicated molecules and multimolecular complexes using computational means. Novel methods, such as HMMs, context-free grammars and the uses of mutual information theory, have taken center stage as highly valuable tools in our quest to represent and characterize biological information. A focus on creative uses of intelligent systems technologies and the trend toward biological application will undoubtedly continue and grow at the 1996 ISMB meeting in St Louis.
Uberbacher
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Computer Science and Mathematics Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, TN 37831-6364, USA.
D000465:Algorithms; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D001419:Bacteria / Q000378:metabolism; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000235:genetics; D005544:Forecasting; D016680:Genome, Bacterial; D008954:Models, Biological; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008967:Molecular Biology / Q000193:education / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D017510:Protein Folding; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D012313:RNA / Q000737:chemistry; D016415:Sequence Alignment / Q000379:methods
D011506:Proteins; D012313:RNA