Report on the International Conference & Meetings EMBnet-RIBio 2009

Abstract

The International EMBnet-RIBio Conference 2009, "Bioinformatics for High Throughput Technologies and the Interface of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology" was successfully held in Puerto Morelos, in the heart of the Mexican Caribbean, from October 26 th to 29 th . The meeting was jointly organized and sponsored by the Center for Genomic Sciences (CCG), the Coordination of Scientific Research (CTIC) and the Institute of Biotechnology (IBt) of UNAM, as well as the EMBnet International Organization, RIBio (the Iberoamerican network for bioinformatics) and the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB). Some of the principal events during the reunion were: 1) The foundation of the Iberoamerican Society for Bioinformatics (Sociedad Iberoamericana de Bioinformática, SoIBio), within the RIBio Annual General Meeting. 2) The EMBnet Annual General Meeting (AGM) which, for the very first time, took place outside of the European Continent. This, together with the SoIBio meeting, brought together scientists of Bioinformatics from the 5 continents. It should be mentioned that this is the second time of such a joint conference after the one in Malaga a couple of years ago. 3) The Keynote lecture, " Systems Biology of Cancer Cells", presented by Dr. Chris Sander, Head of the Computational Biology Center of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, recognized founder of bioinformatics as well as a founder of the EMBnet organization. 4) The EMBnet Internal Meeting, attended by several node managers from all the member countries, where in addition to internal issues, they emphasized the EMBnet interest in defining collaborations worldwide with regional societies and scientific organizations.