The EMBnet International Conference 2020: Bioinformatics Approaches to Precision Research

In this paper, we first summarise the 2020 International Conference of EMBnet (The Global Bioinformatics Network) on “Bioinformatics Approaches to Precision Research”, held on 23th-24th September 2020, and then briefly introduce the main topics and contributions presented at the Conference and published in this supplement issue. The Conference’s main aim was to share the knowledge and scientific achievements of EMBnet members to prompt the cross-fertilisation of ideas and collaborations. The title reflects the type of contributions presented (20 in total), covering a wide range of cutting-edge research topics for which advanced bioinformatics methods and precision approaches are essential, and training in Bioinformatics. As for many other organisations, 2020 was the first year that the EMBnet Annual General Meeting was not in presence but ran on a virtual meeting platform because of the pandemic’s travel restrictions to moves. If this situation represented a limitation to our social activities, it allowed us to offer the possibility to attend the Conference to a larger number of researchers (i.e., 190 from 38 different countries). Among all registered people, 148 were following the conference presentations on both days. Under the authors’ permission, presentations were recorded and are available at the EMBnet Conference 2020 playlist on YouTube (https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVP2771lOozCHAOgVXBdqPW3oclEmzNIA), whereas the programme is available at the EMBnet Conference 2020 Google Drive folder (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wWqp_I5vf-1GUlKmbCUq45EDQ9LfbrpC/view)

Quality assurance and enrichment of biological and biomedical ontologies and terminologies

Biological and biomedical ontologies and terminologies are used to organize and store various domain-specific knowledge to provide standardization of terminology usage and to improve interoperability. The growing number of such ontologies and terminologies and their increasing adoption in clinical, research and healthcare settings call for effective and efficient quality assurance and semantic enrichment techniques of these ontologies and terminologies. In this editorial, we provide an introductory summary of nine articles included in this supplement issue for quality assurance and enrichment of biological and biomedical ontologies and terminologies. The articles cover a range of standards including SNOMED CT, National Cancer Institute Thesaurus, Unified Medical Language System, North American Association of Central Cancer Registries and OBO Foundry Ontologies.

Selected articles from the Fourth International Workshop on Semantics-Powered Data Mining and Analytics (SEPDA 2019)

In this introduction, we first summarize the Fourth International Workshop on Semantics-Powered Data Mining and Analytics (SEPDA 2019) held on October 26, 2019 in conjunction with the 18th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2019) in Auckland, New Zealand, and then briefly introduce seven research articles included in this supplement issue, covering the topics on Knowledge Graph, Ontology-Powered Analytics, and Deep Learning.

The International Conference on Intelligent Biology and Medicine (ICIBM) 2020: Scalable techniques and algorithms for computational genomics

In this introduction article, we summarize the 2020 International Conference on Intelligent Biology and Medicine (ICIBM 2020) conference which was held on August 9–10, 2020 (virtual conference). We then briefly describe the nine research articles included in this supplement issue. ICIBM 2020 hosted four scientific sections covering current topics in bioinformatics, computational biology, genomics, biomedical informatics, among others. A total of 75 original manuscripts were submitted to ICIBM 2020. All the papers were under rigorous review (at least three reviewers), and highly ranked manuscripts were selected for oral presentation and supplement issues. This genomics supplement issue included nine manuscripts. These articles cover methods and applications for single cell RNA sequencing, multi-omics data integration for gene regulation, gene fusion detection from long-read RNA sequencing, gene co-expression analysis of metabolic pathways in cancer, integrative genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of subcortical imaging phenotype in Alzheimer’s disease, as well as deep learning methods for protein structure prediction, metabolic pathway membership inference, and horizontal gene transfer (HGT) insertion sites prediction.

The International Conference on Intelligent Biology and Medicine (ICIBM) 2020: Data-driven analytics in biomedical genomics

This editorial summarizes eight research articles included in this supplement issue for the 2020 International Conference on Intelligent Biology and Medicine (ICIBM 2020) conference, that was held on August 9-10, 2020 (virtual conference), with a topic on data-driven analytics in biomedical genomics. These articles cover a wide range of topics in medical genomics that focus on integrative analysis of genomics data together with other types of data toward understanding complex human diseases, including cancer. With the growing importance of data analytics in biomedical science, we expect this collection of research articles provides scientific discussions in this direction.

From the Desk of Editor-in-Chief Vol. 38: COVID-19 (Supplement Issue)

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Physiological monitoring in the complex multimorbid heart failure patient - Conclusions

Comorbidities are increasingly recognized as crucial components of the heart failure syndrome. Main specific challenges are polypharmacy, poor adherence to treatments, psychological aspects, and the need of monitoring after discharge. The chronic multimorbid patient therefore represents a specific heart failure phenotype that needs an appropriate and continuous management over time. This supplement issue covers the key points of a series of meeting coordinated by the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), that have discussed the issues surrounding the effective monitoring of our ever more complex and multimorbid heart failure patients. Here, we present an overview of the complex issues from a healthcare delivery perspective.