Archive Site Provided for Historical Purposes
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy Human Genome Program
Human Genome News, July 1990; 2(2)
Results Presented Suggest Importance of Combining Multiple Reasoning Techniques
The Stanford University 1990 Spring Symposium Series, sponsored by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), was held March 27-29. For the first time, the series included an Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Molecular Biology symposium, which proved to be an excellent forum for exchange of ideas among AI scientists and engineers who are concentrating on research applications in molecular biology.
Abstracts were submitted from more than 160 researchers in Australia, Canada, England, Greece, Italy, Japan, Scotland, and the United States; the large number of researchers and the breadth of investigations using AI techniques indicate the rapid growth in this interdisciplinary field within the last 5 years.
The symposium featured 30 short technical presentations, grouped into the technical sessions shown below.
The session on Money, Careers, and Resources provided an opportunity for Peter Clepper (NationalLibrary of Medicine) and Robert Futrelle (Northeastern University) to elaborate on fundingmechanisms and resources at NIH and the National Science Foundation (NSF), respectively. Theconcluding session on Senior Perspectives prepared by David Searls (Unisys), Doug Brutlag (StanfordUniversity School of Medicine), Peter Friedland (NASA Ames Research Center), and JoshuaLederberg (Rockefeller University) explored the notion of DNA as a language and the future rolesof AI in molecular biology research.
In a final discussion led by program chairman Lawrence Hunter (National Library of Medicine),participants noted that molecular biology, with its "constrained complexity," represents a logical application area for ai and related methods and algorithms because problems posed by molecular biology research are at the appropriate level of complexity for current ai techniques. established standards are available to assess the performance of new or reenacted methodologies, and funds seem to be sufficient to support an effective overall effort based on peer review. additionally, collaborations appear to be readily possible because personnel from both disciplines are represented at most research centers and universities.
A listing of the contents of a database of over 100 reserchers and funding agents in AI and Molecular Biology is available. The purpose of this database is to facilitate communication with researchers in biology and computer science. Via anonymous ftp on the Internet, the database may be downloaded from the directory /pub/aimb-db on host lhc.nlm.nih.gov. Internet address: 130.14.1.128.
To request files via e-mail, send a message to:
Technical Presentation Sessions
Submitted by Reinhold C. Mann, Head
Intelligent Systems Section
Engineering Physics and Mathematics Division
ORNL
The electronic form of the newsletter may be cited in the following style:
Human Genome Program, U.S. Department of Energy, Human Genome News (v2n2).
The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international 13-year effort, 1990 to 2003. Primary goals were to discover the complete set of human genes and make them accessible for further biological study, and determine the complete sequence of DNA bases in the human genome. See Timeline for more HGP history.
Published from 1989 until 2002, this newsletter facilitated HGP communication, helped prevent duplication of research effort, and informed persons interested in genome research.
