A Semantic Web for bioinformatics: goals, tools, systems, applications.

Abstract

Network Tools and Applications in Biology (NETTAB) [1] is a series of workshops focused on the most promising and innovative Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools and to their usefulness in Bioinformatics. These workshops aim at introducing participants to innovative network standards and technologies that are being applied to the biology field. To this end, each year a special emphasis is given to a focus theme. Workshops also include special sessions devoted both to the general theme of the series of workshops, i.e. “Network Tools and Applications in Biology”, and to further topics selected by local organizers. Biological data integration issues were already discussed in previous editions of this series of workshops, including topics such as “CORBA and XML: towards a bioinformatics integrated network environment” (NETTAB 2001) [2], “Agents in Bioinformatics” (NETTAB 2002) [3], “Workflows management: new abilities for the biological information overflow” (NETTAB 2005) [4] and “Distributed Applications, Web Services, Tools and GRID Infrastructures for Bioinformatics” (NETTAB 2006) [5,6]. The Seventh NETTAB workshop was held at the Computer Science Department of the University of Pisa, on June 12-15, 2007, having “A Semantic Web for Bioinformatics: Goals, Tools, Systems, Applications” as focus theme. Adjunct themes were “Algorithms in bioinformatics” and “Formal Methods for Systems Biology”. This BMC Bioinformatics Supplement includes the best papers and posters – representing all the themes - from works presented at the workshop.