After the Genome 2: Towards a Predictive Functional Genomics Conference

摘要

The After the Genome meetings were started in 1995 to help the biological community think about and prepare for the changes in biological research in the face of the oncoming flow of genomic information. The term 'After the Genome' refers to a future in which complete inventories of the gene products of entire organisms become available. 'After the Genome II: Towards a Predictive Functional Genomics' meeting took place at the Bishop's Lodge in Santa Fe, New Mexico from November 9-12, 1996. This by-invitation-only meeting was attended by a total of 93 participants, 39 of which were presenters. The organizers of the conference brought together a broadly multidisciplinary group of thinkers and working scientists from subject fields within as well as far outside of conventional biology with the expectation that this will help focus thinking beyond the immediate future. The participants included: biological researchers, computer scientists, high-ranking officials from government agencies, reporters who chronicle biology, representatives of philanthropic organizations, and other eminent intellectuals. The meeting was a successful one in that it provided the participants with thoughtful ideas about approaches to the future of biology. There were discussions about the physical and informatic methods for assigning function to genes and gene pathways, the models and other analytical frameworks for making sense of this data with an eye to eventual prediction of the behavior of living systems, and the bottlenecks in acquisition and exploitation of this information that slow its application to problems of social and industrial significance.