IInCoB, the International Conference in Bioinformatics is a major conference in Bioinformatics which has been successfully conducted since its inception in 2002 at Bangkok. The previous InCoB meetings were held at

1. InCoB 2002 at Bangkok, Thailand
2. InCoB 2003 at Penang, Malaysia
3. InCoB 2004 at Auckland, New Zealand
4. InCoB 2005 at Busan, South Korea

It is a major meet of all the stalwarts in the general area of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, and InCoB 2006 was among the first such meetings being organized in India by the Department of BioTechnology (DBT). The meeting helped bridge the gap between the research groups in India with those working in the same field from around the world. The InCoB also included the fifth annual conference of the Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNet).

Cutting-edge computational biology applications and findings on interdisciplinary research such as molecular evolution, health, agriculture, microbes and tropical diseases and on sequence and structure analysis were discussed and interactions between groups working on the same topics followed, leading to problem solving sessions. It thus served the main objective of InCoB which was to provide a platform for experts and budding bioinformaticians to develop and apply computational methods for solving biologically varying problems and to discuss and exchange ideas and thoughts on the development of bioinformatics.

The participation was overwhelming with more than a 1000 participants registering for the meeting. The main programs of the conference were

1.       Plenary talks by almost 15 eminent personalities in the field on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology and 30 invited talks on the various aspects of the subject which included but not limited to:

·         Computational Biology

·         Genomics and Proteomics

·         Molecular Dynamics simulations

·         Drug Design

·         Structural Bioinformatics

·         Synthetic Biology

·         Micro array analysis

·         Data Mining and databases

·         Industry Interference

·         Bioinformatics products

2.       Talks by academicians and industry personnel so that there is better bonding between the research and the industry sectors

3.       Original, refereed papers to be published in the journals BMC Bioinformatics and Journal of Biosciences (Bangalore).

4.       Poster presentations/Software Demonstrations

These were some of the subjects on which the posters and original unpublished papers were invited.

·         Sequence Analysis

·         Evolution and Phylogeny

·         Genomic

·         Transcriptomics

·         Proteomics

·         Pathways

·         Networks and Systems Biology

·         Structural Bioinformatics

·         Neuro-informatics

·         Bio-Ontologies

·         Biomedical Text Mining

·         Biological Data Modeling and Integration

·         LIMS and Other Tools To Support Experimental Biology

·         Applications of Bioinformatics to Biomedicine

·         Agriculture and Drug Discovery

The Conference was inaugurate by Kapil Sibal, Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, Government of India and Dr M. K Bhan Secretary, Government of India Minister for Science and Technology, Department of Biotechnology.

Each day the lectures started with a plenary talk which consisted of the likes of Dr. Michael Waterman chaired by eminent scientists like Dr Ashok Kolaskar, Dr. Jayaram, Dr. R Ramaswamy etc. Parallel lectures followed till lunch time. During lunch time, time was given for the students to interact freely with the researchers and update their knowledge. The poster presentation session followed, until tea time after which the lectures continued which concluded the day’s proceedings. This was the format followed for all the three days.

The poster presented by the Anti-TB team of students from MSc Bioinformatics, Suryadatta College Management and Information technology, affiliated to the Sikkim Manipal University was titled as “TB Gateway”. TB Gateway is a web interface created for accessing the databases which consist of Available treatment, Alternative medicine, Strains and the TB Treatment Units. The interface itself consist of a very useful website which has been created with the main aim of spreading awareness about Tuberculosis which is actually completely curable and yet is the second largest disease causing death worldwide. The website has been constructed in such a way that a layman can use it with the same ease as a researcher might look for relevant information and there is information for everyone.

The topic was widely accepted in the conference and the poster received a very good response. Talks with a few institutes and companies induced a collaborative atmosphere. The presentation was scheduled on the 18^th, giving the team ample time to attend all the rest of the lectures without any tension of giving the presentation and they took full advantage of the fact.

The members of the Anti-TB team who attended the conference were Amrapali Zaveri, Chaitanya Gokhale, Darshan Waghchare, Tejasvi Mahendrakar, Deepak Toppinkatti and Shweta Jog

The conference was supported jointly by The Department of BioTechnology, Government of India , Jawaharlal Nehru University and Indian Institute of Technology Delhi