NIC Series Volume 40:   From Computational Biophysics to Systems Biology (CBSB08) Ulrich H. E. Hansmann, Jan H. Meinke, Sandipan Mohanty, Walter Nadler, Olav Zimmermann (Editors)   ISBN: 978-3-9810843-6-8 URN: urn:nbn:de:0001-00457 July 2008, 452 pages

PREFACE

As in 2006 and 2007, the "Computational Biology and Biophysics" group of the John von Neumann Institute for Computing (NIC) organized in 2008 again a workshop "From Computational Biophysics to Systems Biology" (CBSB08). Researchers and students from all over the world met from May 19th to May 21st, 2008 at the Research Centre Jülich and discussed physics-based approaches to systems biology. The increasing importance of computing in Biology, Medicine and other life science can be seen already by the number of participants which increased from 70 (CBSB06) to 150 (CBSB08) in only three years. As in the previous year, the participants explored in scientific presentations and numerous informal discussions a wide range of topics ranging from single macromolecules to the working of entire cells. This proceeding volume collects selected presentations from the 3-day long workshop that may serve as starting point for further discussions. It is divided into articles by invited speakers and such originally presented as posters or in contributed talks, as the interdisciplinary nature of the articles often defies a simple classification according to subject areas.

Besides the editors, Helga Frank, Erika Wittig and Martina Kamps helped organize the workshop. We also wish to thank IBM (Germany) for generous support.

Jülich, June 2008

U. H. E. Hansmann, J. H. Meinke, S. Mohanty, W. Nadler, O. Zimmermann