Submission deadline: October 1, 2004
In the last decade, biologists have experienced a fundamental revolution from traditional R&D involving the study of single genes, metabolic pathways and isolated cellular mechanisms, to e-biology that addresses whole cell physiology, communities of cells, and cellular systems. This has been accompanied by an explosion in the number and size of public data resources, and a rapid growth in the variety and volume of laboratory data, from microarrays measuring gene transcription levels and genome sequence variations to protein interaction screens measuring components of protein complexes, etc.
Life science data is complex and data sets have complex inter-relationships. The data is often incomplete, uncertain, or varies significantly across biological replicates. Data can evolve more quickly than the technologies developed to interpret the data. Thus, life sciences data is not well suited for current data models and query paradigms. Consequently, biologists use a DBMS primarily as a persistent store, and develop ad hoc analytical tools around the DBMS. Such tools include pattern matching for DNA and protein sequences, 3D protein structure analysis. modeling and visualization for gene expression data and metabolic pathways, etc. The challenge for database researchers is developing appropriate technology to manage life sciences data, to make it accessible in an efficient way to scientists, and to provide the appropriate data models and data analysis tools.
Wide interest in bioinformatics was sparked by the human genome project. The last few years has seen emerging activity in the database, data mining, and information retrieval communities. This special issue will feature papers that reflect synergies between computational advances in data management and manipulation and the fields of molecular biology, cell physiology and systems biology. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:
Guest editors:
Terry Gaasterland University of California, San Diego and Rockefeller University gaasterl at genomes dot rockefeller dot edu
H.V. Jagadish University of Michigan jag at umich dot edu
Louiqa Raschid University of Maryland louiqa at umiacs dot umd dot edu
Authors should email their full paper in electronic format by October 1, 2004 to any of the guest editors. The review process will be handled electronically. Submitted papers should be in PostScript or PDF version. Standard VLDB Journal instructions for authors are applicable (EXCEPT the fact that electronic submission is required for this special issue). Details are available at:
http://springerlink.metapress.com/download/profiles/springerlink/0 0778-about.pdf
Important dates
About the VLDB Journal
The VLDB Journal is a quarterly journal published on behalf of the VLDB Endowment. It was launched in July 1992 and it is now published both in electronic and printed edition by Springer-Verlag. The scope of the VLDB Journal encompasses all aspects of database and information systems architectures as well as cross-disciplinary topics and advanced applications. http://link.springer.de/journals/vldb/.