Proceedings of the International Beilstein Symposium on Glyco-Bioinformatics

The Beilstein Symposia address contemporary issues in the chemical and related sciences by employing an interdisciplinary approach. Scientists from a wide range of areas - often outside chemistry - are invited to present aspects of their work for discussion with the aim of not only advancing science, but also, furthering interdisciplinary communication. In 2009, the Beilstein-Institut in cooperation with Professor Peter Seeberger, MPI for Colloids and Surfaces (Potsdam), hosted the First Symposium on Glyco-Bioinformatics in Potsdam with the aim to pave the way towards the development of first ideas for the integration of glyco-bioinformatics in an universal platform that will serve biologist, chemists and all interested in glycosciences. Glycomics is an emerging field within the -omics-sciences which addresses the investigation of the structure-function relationships of complex biosynthesized carbohydrates and the role they play within biological systems. The post-genomic era has seen an explosion of activities in the areas of genomics and proteomics in both fundamental research as well as biotechnology applications. Sequencing and synthesis of nucleic acids and proteins has been performed in an automated fashion for many years now; these important basic techniques are now being applied to carbohydrates. Through the work of a number of key laboratories around the world, significant scientific and technical advances are being made resulting in an increasing number of data sets of important interactions of carbohydrates with proteins and nucleic acids become available. The scientific progress of both genomics and proteomics relies on the interdisciplinary nature of a laboratory-based and a computer-based cooperation. Such an interdisciplinary glyco-based community is currently starting to become established; this symposium is aimed at supporting these efforts by bringing together glycochemists and biologists with experts in bioinformatics and computer sciences to lay the ground-work for a concerted effort in the area of glyco-bioinformatics. The symposium covered the use of publicly available data, data mining, structure prediction and docking of carbohydrates, web-based services to combine proteomics and glycomics data for structure-function research and glycosylation analysis. In this Proceedings book ten authors contributed to a comprehensive view on the developments in the emerging field of glyco-bioinformatics.