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                          CALL FOR PAPERS
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                           CP98 Workshop
                                on
            Constraints in Bioinformatics/Biocomputing

  (http://www.cs.city.ac.uk/~drg/cp98-workshop/cp98-workshop.html)
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                           Pisa, Italy
                         30 October 1998
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The workshop will be held in conjunction with the Fourth International
Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP98),
October 26-30, 1998 at Pisa, Italy.

Scope of the workshop 

Bioinformatics is the development and application of methods in
mathematics and informatics for approaching problems in molecular
biology, whereas Biocomputing uses naturally occurring architectures
and behaviours as models for computational methods, for example neural
networks, genetic algorithms, genetic programming and DNA computing.

This is the second workshop on this topic, in an very exciting and
rapidly expanding area; selected papers from the first workshop will appear
in a special issue of the Constraints Journal.  We believe that
constraint programming technologies can play a very significant role in
these fast developing areas.
Contributions are solicited from researchers working in any of
these fields. Topics include (but are not restricted to) the
application of constraint technology to

* sequencing and sequence analysis  
* languages for the description of biomolecular structures 
        (primary, secondary and tertiary) 
* design and implementation of biomolecular databases  
* algorithms for locating structures in biomolecular databases  
* protein topology, including prediction and folding pathways  
* determination of protein domains  
* molecular docking problems  
* description and determination of metabolic pathways  
* determination of evolutionary relationships  
* discovery and data mining of biostructures  
* genetic and physical mapping  
* DNA rearrangement  
* sequence alignment  
* phylogeny  
* neural networks  
* genetic algorithms  
* genetic programs  
* DNA computing  

Papers that combine theory and practice are especially welcome.
Authors are strongly encouraged to ensure high quality of both
the biological as well as the computer science aspects of their submissions.

Paper submissions 

Authors are invited to submit original papers written in English and
approximately 10 A4 pages in length to David Gilbert
(drg@cs.city.ac.uk) at the contact address below. We encourage authors
to submit by electronic mail in self-contained Postscript format.
Alternatively five paper copies may be submitted.

Publication 

An informal proceedings of the workshop will be available on-line
prior to the workshop. It is expected that selected papers will either 
be published as a book or as an international journal issue.

Organisation 

David Gilbert, City University, UK, drg@cs.city.ac.uk

Rolf Backofen, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen, Germany,
backofen@informatik.uni-muenchen.de

Geoff Barton, European BioInformatics Institute, Cambridge UK,
geoff@ebi.ac.uk

Ingvar Eidhammer, University of Bergen, Norway, ingvar@ii.uib.no

Christine Gaspin, National Institute of Agronomical Research, France,
gaspin@toulouse.inra.fr

Roland Yap, National University of Singapore, ryap@iscs.nus.edu.sg


Important dates 

15 August 1998    Paper submissions 
15 September 1998    Acceptance decisions 
10 October 1998    Final copy due 
30 October 1998    Workshop

Further information 

The workshop web-site is 
http://www.cs.city.ac.uk/~drg/cp98-workshop/cp98-workshop.html

Information on CP98 is available at the CP98 web site: 
http://www.di.unipi.it/cp98/