[alife] CfP: Systems Biology Special Issue of the ALife journal

[Jan T. Kim]

Call for papers for a Special Issue of the Artificial Life Journal on

    Systems Biology

edited by Roland Eils and Jan T. Kim

*** Deadline for submissions: 20 April 2006 ***

CfP Website: http://www.cmp.uea.ac.uk/sysbio_ecal/specialissue.html

Systems Biology and Artificial Life both involve computer modelling
of living systems, and both aim at revealing mechanisms that underlie
biological processes and phenomena. Systems Biology is typically more
closely associated with analysing "postgenomic" data, coming from
novel, high-throughput methods such as microarrays, mass spectroscopy
etc. Artificial Life includes computational and other "artificial" models
of biological systems as objects of study. Both fields share the objective
to understand the fundamental mechanisms and principles underlying
biological systems and phenomena. As Systems Biology and Artificial
Life converge towards this common objective, they can mutually benefit
from each other. Artificial Life models can be tested using biological
data from high-throughput measurements, Systems Biology methods can
be evaluated using Artifical Life models, and modelling approaches can
be compared and finally be integrated to arrive at advanced models of
biological systems.

The Special Issue on Systems Biology aims to bring the Systems Biology
and the Artificial Life communities closer together in order to enable
and advance such synergies. We call for contributions reporting research
on topics that include, but are not limited to:

    * Modelling of biological processes in evolutionary biology, ecology,
      developmental biology, immunology, cell biology and molecular biology

    * Using pattern recognition / machine learning to analyse data from
      molecular biology

    * Platforms for computational modelling of living systems

    * Applications of Systems Biology in the design of biological and
      of technical systems

    * Complexity and its emergence in biological processes

    * Self-organization in living systems (cells, organisms, swarms,
      ecosystems, ...)

    * Dynamics of information in living and life-like systems

    * Systems approaches to biological systems and to computational
      models of life

    * Application of bio-inspired methods for analysing biological data

    * ...

Furthermore, we also call for scientific or technical reviews on topics
such as

    * Technical standards for data formats, data analysis or simulation

    * Theories and scientific concepts of biological systems and
      processes

    * ...

Authors are asked to write their contributions to be accessible to
readers from both Artificial Life and Systems Biology backgrounds. This
is especially important for review articles.

Submissions should be prepared according to the guidelines provided by
the Artificial Life journal, posted at

    http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=4&tid=41

Please send all submissions and enquiries to one of the guest editors
Roland Eils (r.eils at dkfz.de) or Jan T. Kim (jtk at cmp.uea.ac.uk). The
deadline for submissions is 20 April 2006.