EC-US Plant Biotechnology Workshop on Plant Bioinformatics and Databases to be held December 7 - 8, 2009 at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton (UK)

生物学已经成为一门信息科学。包括植物生物学在内的所有生物学领域都需要收集、存储、整合、分析、检索和传播信息。为了满足这一需求，在过去的30年里，生物信息学已经成为一个研究领域，包括但不限于数据库的开发、计算分析、算法开发、标准和可视化工具来存储、处理和可视化生物数据集。到目前为止，这些资源中的许多都集中在基于序列的数据集上，这些数据集构成了可用的高通量分析的主体，但这种情况正在迅速改变。随着技术的进步和对转化研究的需求，数据集的类型和规模正在发生变化，扩展将需要新的开发、更多的合作和资源投资。理解了这一要求，网络基础设施已被确定为未来投资的领域，包括美国国家科学基金会21世纪发现的网络基础设施愿景（http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf0728/index.jsp），国家研究委员会关于“国家植物基因组计划成就和植物生物学新视野”的报告（http://dels.nas.edu/plant_genome/report.shtml），国家植物基因组计划（NPGI） 5年计划（http://www.nsf.gov/bio/pubs/reports/npgi_five_year_plan_2009_2013.pdf）和欧盟-美国植物生物技术研究2008。欧盟-美国植物生物技术研究工作组确定了“建立植物生物技术的转化管道”，包括食品、饲料和可再生资源，作为美国和欧盟合作的一个领域。在这一更大的目标下，工作组确定“网络基础设施”为一个重要的合作领域。为了解决欧盟-美国工作组的建议，一个小型讲习班将汇集一个跨学科的科学家小组，讨论与支持植物生物技术有关的生物信息学方面现有和未来的挑战。讲习班将编写一份白皮书，就植物生物信息学研究的优先合作领域提出建议，向更广泛的科学界散发。

Biology has become an information science. Common to all of the areas of biology, including plant biology, is the need to collect, store, integrate, analyze, retrieve and disseminate information. To meet this need in the last 30 years, bioinformatics has emerged as a field of research that includes but is not limited to the development of databases, computational analysis, algorithm development, standards, and visualization tools to store, handle and visualize biological data sets. Many of these resources to date have focused on sequence-based data sets which make up the bulk of the available high-throughput analyses, but this landscape is rapidly changing. With advances in technology and the need for translational research, the types and magnitude of the data sets are changing and scaling will require new development, increased collaboration and investment of resources.Understanding this requirement, cyberinfrastructure has been identified as an area for future investment in several reports including the NSF Cyberinfrastructure Vision for 21st Century Discovery (http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf0728/index.jsp), National Research Council Report on the "Achievements of the National Plant Genome Initiative and New Horizons in Plant Biology" (http://dels.nas.edu/plant_genome/report.shtml), the National Plant Genome Initiative (NPGI) 5-year plan (http://www.nsf.gov/bio/pubs/reports/npgi_five_year_plan_2009_2013.pdf) and the EC-US Plant Biotechnology Research 2008. The EC-US Plant Biotechnology Research Working Group identified "building translational pipelines for plant biotechnology" encompassing food, feed and renewable resources as an area for US and EC collaboration. Within this larger objective, the Working Group identified "Cyberinfrastructure" as a key area for collaboration.In an effort to address EC-US Working Group recommendations, a small workshop will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scientists to discuss existing and future challenges in bioinformatics related to the support of plant biotechnology. The workshop will produce a whitepaper with recommendations for priority areas of joint collaboration in plant bioinformatics research to be disseminated to the broader scientific community.