Introduction to the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics

AND BIOINFORMATICS Iwould like to welcome you to the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. This inaugural issue introduces the editorial board of IEEE/ACM TCBB and begins fulfilling the scientific mission of the journal, with the publication of three regular papers and one survey. Bioinformatics and computational biology are concerned with the use of computation to understand biological phenomena and to acquire and exploit biological data, increasingly large-scale data. Methods from bioinformatics and computational biology are increasingly used to augment or leverage traditional laboratory and observationbased biology. These methods have become critical in biology due to recent changes in our ability and determination to acquire massive biological data sets, and due to the ubiquitous, successful biological insights that have come from the exploitation of those data. This transformation from a data-poor to a data-rich field began with DNA sequence data, but is now occurring in many other areas of biology. At the same time, we are seeing the beginnings of systems biology, which attempts to integrate diverse types of biological data and knowledge, to obtain insights into the high-level workings of biological systems. The shift to data-driven biology and the accumulation and exploitation of large-scale data has lead to the need for new computational technology (machines, software, algorithms, theory) and for research into these issues. As this transformation extends into more biological domains, so too will bioinformatics and computational biology expand in scope, importance, and the number of participants. Hence, computational biology and bioinformatics, and research into the underlying computational techniques, have a huge future, requiring a large expansion in publication opportunities. The IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics is being launched to provide such publication opportunities for high-quality research papers. The establishment of IEEE/ACM TCBB is supported by several societies of the IEEE and by The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The supporting societies in the IEEE are the IEEE Computer Society, the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, and the IEEE Neural Networks Society. IEEE/ACM TCBB is also cosponsored by the IEEE Control Systems Society. The cooperation of several IEEE societies, along with the ACM, reflects the wide range of interests in computational biology and bioinformatics that will be reflected in the journal, and also demonstrates a commitment by those organizations to further the development of the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics.