8am registration, 9am – 6pm workshop @ ECCB 2014

Workshop website: http://www.cadetbioinformatics.org/workshops/eccb14/

Summary

At present there is little contact between metabolomics and proteomics fields at both wet and dry-lab levels, and so key synergies are being lost. A number of packages offer the complete quantification and identification workflow for discovery proteomics and metabolomics but there is little cross-fertilisation between metabolome and proteome informatics groups, despite numerous overlaps and similarities between disciplines. In some ways this is because metabolome and proteome informatics research has originated from different fields (broadly chemometrics and genome bioinformatics, respectively), yet their distinct perspectives have been applied to identical or similar problems.

The integration of quantitative outputs from proteomics and metabolomics for dynamic systems and pathway modelling is reliant on appropriate and accurate statistical handling. Since metabolomics and proteomics data are processed differently, their statistical integration is a significant challenge – there are differing assumptions on biological variation; differing transformations and error distributions from the various processing steps; and subtly different corrections for multiple hypothesis testing. Cross-fertilisation and cross-development of methodology and ideas between disciplines has the prospect of seeding novel and effective new approaches of analysis.

We therefore believe there is a timely opportunity to bring together the informatics communities in metabolomics and proteomics:

• To underpin existing and to drive new cross-disciplinary collaborations in order to facilitate better statistical integration and therefore better downstream modelling and ultimately biological understanding.
• To allow these disciplines to better ‘borrow strength’ from each other, improving quantitative workflows at all levels.
• To impact on researcher mobility due to clearer understanding of the commonality and subtle differences in workflows between disciplines.
• To support development of joint data exchange and reporting standards for optimal integration of omics data.

Target Audience

This workshop will be of interest to all researchers in proteomics or metabolomics, whether at the wet-lab or informatics level. It will also be of relevance to systems modellers and network biologists who integrate proteomics and metabolomics data and who wish to gain a greater understanding of how upstream processing of this data is performed.

The core aim for this workshop is for there to be an equal proportion of talks on proteome and metabolome informatics. In particular, we will prefer talks that already describe some synergy between the two fields. Speakers are advised to ensure metabolomics concepts are accessible to a proteomics audience, and vice versa.

Call for Contributions

The abstract submission form is here.

Abstract submission deadline: July 7th, 2014.

Notification of acceptance: July 21st, 2014.

Submissions for presentation or poster are invited.

Location

FORUM building
Faculté de Médecine
4, rue Kirschleger
Strasbourg

Confirmed Speakers

Theodore Alexandrov, University of Bremen / University of California San Diego / SCiLS
Conrad Bessant, Queen Mary University of London, UK
Rick Dunn, University of Birmingham, UK
Henning Hermjakob, European Bioinformatics Institute, UK
Simon Hubbard, University of Manchester, UK
Andy Jones, University of Liverpool, UK
Oliver Kohlbacher, University of Tübingen, Germany
Lennart Martens, Universiteit Gent, Belgium
Jeffrey Morris, MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX, USA
Michael Gerlich (Steffen Neumann Lab), IPB Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry, Halle, Germany
Christoph Steinbeck, European Bioinformatics Institute, UK

Organising Committee

Dr Andrew Dowsey, CADET, University of Manchester
Dr Simon Rogers, School of Computer Science, University of Glasgow
Prof Rainer Breitling, MIB, University of Manchester
Dr Richard Unwin, CADET, University of Manchester