17th International Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics (WABI 2017)

Abstract

This proceedings volume contains papers presented at the 17th Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics (WABI 2017), which was held in Boston, MA, USA in conjunction with the 8th ACM Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Health Informatics (ACM BCB) from August 21–23, 2017. The Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics is an annual conference established in 2001 to cover all aspects of algorithmic work in bioinformatics, computational biology, and systems biology. The workshop is intended as a forum for discrete algorithms and machine-learning methods that address important problems in molecular biology, that are founded on sound models, that are computationally efficient, and that have been implemented and tested in simulations and on real datasets. The meeting’s focus is on recent research results, including significant work-in-progress, as well as identifying and explore directions of future research. WABI 2017 is grateful for the support of ACM-BCB in allowing us to cohost the meetings, as well as to ACM-BCB’s sponsors: the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and ACM’s SIGBIO. In 2017, a total of 55 manuscripts were submitted to WABI from which 27 were selected for presentation at the conference. This year, WABI is adopting a new proceedings form, publishing the conference proceedings through the LIPIcs (Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics) proceedings series. Extended versions of selected papers will be invited for publication in a thematic series in the journal Algorithms for Molecular Biology (AMB), published by BioMed Central. The 27 papers were selected based on a thorough peer review, involving at least three independent reviewers per submitted paper, followed by discussions among the WABI Program Committee members. The selected papers cover a wide range of topics, including statistical inference, phylogenetic studies, sequence and genome analysis, comparative genomics, and mass spectrometry data analysis. We thank all the authors of submitted papers and the members of the WABI Program Committee and their reviewers for their efforts that made this conference possible. We are also grateful to the WABI Steering Committee for their help and advice. We also thank all the conference participants and speakers who contribute to a great scientific program. In particular, we are indebted to the keynote speaker of the conference, Tandy Warnow, for her presentation. We also thank Christopher Pockrandt for setting up the WABI webpage and Umit Acar for his help with coordinating the WABI and ACM-BCB pages. Finally, we thank the ACM-BCB Organizing Committee, especially Nurit Haspel and Lenore Cowen, for their hard work in making all of the local arrangements and working closely with us to ensure a successful and exciting WABI and ACM-BCB.