RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Computational biology comprises a wide range of technologies and approaches. Multiple technologies can be combined to create more powerful workflows if the individuals contributing the data or providing tools for its interpretation can find mutual understanding and consensus. Much conversation and joint investigation are required in order to identify and implement the best approaches. Traditionally, scientific conferences feature talks presenting novel technologies or insights, followed up by informal discussions during coffee breaks. In multi-institution collaborations, in order to reach agreement on implementation details or to transfer deeper insights in a technology and practical skills, a representative of one group typically visits the other. However, this does not scale well when the number of technologies or research groups is large. Conferences have responded to this issue by introducing Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) sessions, which offer an opportunity for individuals with common interests to intensify their interaction. However, parallel BoF sessions often make it hard for participants to join multiple BoFs and find common ground between the different technologies, and BoFs are generally too short to allow time for participants to program together. RESULTS: This report summarises our experience with computational biology Codefests, Hackathons and Sprints, which are interactive developer meetings. They are structured to reduce the limitations of traditional scientific meetings described above by strengthening the interaction among peers and letting the participants determine the schedule and topics. These meetings are commonly run as loosely scheduled "unconferences" (self-organized identification of participants and topics for meetings) over at least two days, with early introductory talks to welcome and organize contributors, followed by intensive collaborative coding sessions. We summarise some prominent achievements of those meetings and describe differences in how these are organised, how their audience is addressed, and their outreach to their respective communities. CONCLUSIONS: Hackathons, Codefests and Sprints share a stimulating atmosphere that encourages participants to jointly brainstorm and tackle problems of shared interest in a self-driven proactive environment, as well as providing an opportunity for new participants to get involved in collaborative projects.
Assuntos
Biologia Computacional , Comportamento Cooperativo , Software , Comunicação , InternetRESUMO
Web services have become a key technology for bioinformatics, since life science databases are globally decentralized and the exponential increase in the amount of available data demands for efficient systems without the need to transfer entire databases for every step of an analysis. However, various incompatibilities among database resources and analysis services make it difficult to connect and integrate these into interoperable workflows. To resolve this situation, we invited domain specialists from web service providers, client software developers, Open Bio* projects, the BioMoby project and researchers of emerging areas where a standard exchange data format is not well established, for an intensive collaboration entitled the BioHackathon 2008. The meeting was hosted by the Database Center for Life Science (DBCLS) and Computational Biology Research Center (CBRC) and was held in Tokyo from February 11th to 15th, 2008. In this report we highlight the work accomplished and the common issues arisen from this event, including the standardization of data exchange formats and services in the emerging fields of glycoinformatics, biological interaction networks, text mining, and phyloinformatics. In addition, common shared object development based on BioSQL, as well as technical challenges in large data management, asynchronous services, and security are discussed. Consequently, we improved interoperability of web services in several fields, however, further cooperation among major database centers and continued collaborative efforts between service providers and software developers are still necessary for an effective advance in bioinformatics web service technologies.
RESUMO
Full-Malaria/Parasites is a database for transcriptome studies of apicomplexa and other parasites, which is based on our original full-length cDNA sequences and physical cDNA clone resources. In this update, the database has been expanded to contain the shogun sequencing for the entire sequences of 14,818 non-redundant full-length cDNA clones from six apicomplexa parasites and 6.8 million of transcription start sites (TSS), both of which had been produced by novel protocols using the oligo-capping method and the Illumina GA sequencer. The former should be the ultimate data for exact annotation of the expressed genes, while the latter should be useful for ultra-deep expression analysis. Furthermore, we have launched Full-Arthropods, a full-length cDNA database for arthropods of medical importance. Full-Arthropods contains 50 343 one-pass sequences, 10 399 shotgun complete sequences and 22.4 million TSS tags in anopheles mosquitoes that transmit malaria, tsetse flies that transmit trypanosomiasis and dust mites that cause allergic dermatitis and bronchial asthma. By providing the largest integrated full-length cDNA data resources in the apicomplexa parasites as well as their vectors, Full-Malaria/Parasites and Full-Arthropods should help combat parasitic diseases. Full-Malaria/Parasites and Full-Arthropods are accessible from http://fullmal.hgc.jp/.
