Preface: Special RECOMB'99 Issue

THIS ISSUE of the Journal of Computationa l Biology contains a selection of the papers presented at the Third Annual International Conference on Computational Biology, RECOMB’99, in Lyon, France, April 11–14, 1999, (http://www.inria.fr/RECOMB99) <http://www.inria.fr/RECOMB99)>. The RECOMB Conference Series (http://www.sandia.gov/recomb <http://www.sandia.gov/ recomb>) is closely allied with the Journal and was started in 1997 by the executive editors Sorin Istrail, Pavel Pevzner, and Michael Waterman. Selections of papers from RECOMB’97 and RECOMB’98 appeared in Volume 4, Numbers 3–4, 1997, and Volume 5, Number 3, 1998 of the Journal of Computationa l Biology. In response to our Call for Papers for RECOMB’99, 149 submissions were received. The Program Committee accepted 35 of the submissions for presentation. They were published as extended abstracts in the Proceedings of RECOMB’99. Full versions of 11 papers from the RECOMB’99 program as well as the papers of the two Plenary Lectures presented at the conference are included in this volume. The eight Plenary Speakers at RECOMB’99 were Peer Bork (EMBL, Germany), Cyrus Chothia (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, UK), Gene Myers (Celera Genomics), John Moult (CARB, University of Maryland), Piotr Slonimski (Centre de Genétique Moleculaire du C.N.R.S., France), Ed Southern (University of Oxford, UK), Peter Willett (University of ShefŽ eld, UK), and John Wooley (US DOE). The Stanislaw Ulam Memorial Lecture was given by Piotr Slonimski and the Distinguished New Technology Lecture was given by Ed Southern. The Program Committee of RECOMB’99 consisted of Stephen Altschul (NCBI, NIH, USA), Alberto Apostolico (University of Padova, Italy), Gary Benson (Mount Sinai School of Medicine, USA), David Botstein (Stanford University, USA), Sorin Istrail (Sandia National Laboratories, USA), Ken Dill (University of California, San Francisco, USA), Tao Jiang (McMaster University, Canada), John Kececioglou (University of Georgia, USA), Richard Karp (University of Washington, USA), Richard Lathrop (University of California, Irvine, USA), Thomas Lengauer (GMD-SCAI, Germany), Arthur Lesk (University of Cambridge, England), Michael Levitt (Stanford University, USA), Pavel Pevzner (University of Southern California, USA), Mireille Regnier (INRIA, France), Rich Roberts (New England Biolabs, USA), Chris Sander (Millenium Pharmaceutical, USA), Miyano Satoru (Tokyo University, Japan), Ron Shamir (Tel-Aviv University, Israel), Jeffrey Skolnick (The Scripps Research Institute, USA), Donna Slonim (Whitehead Institute, USA), Michael Waterman (University of Southern California, USA), and Terry Speed (University of California, Berkeley, USA). RECOMB’99 was supported by the US Department of Energy, OfŽ ce of Science, SmithKline Beecham, IBM, National Science Foundation, International Society for Computational Biology, INRIA, CNRS, INRA, Eurogentec-Bel, IMGT, LIPHA, Mairie de Lyon, Conseil Regional Rhone-Alpes, Conseil General du Rhone, and ERCIM. The Steering Committee of the RECOMB Conferences consists of Sorin Istrail, General Vice-Chair (Sandia National Laboratories), Richard Karp (University of Washington), Thomas Lengauer (GMD-SCAI, Germany), Pavel Pevzner, General Chair (University of Southern California), Ron Shamir (Tel-Aviv University, Israel), and Michael Waterman, General Chair (University of Southern California). We hope that this volume presents a good picture of the variety of papers and topics of this exciting and extraordinary RECOMB’99 Conference.