Systems Biology and Functional Genomics Workshop

 Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) is located at the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB), one of the largest research clusters in southern Europe. This meeting was held at the new CRG/PRBB building overlooking the beautiful Catalonian coast. The main purpose of the meeting was to bring Japanese and European scientists in the field together to grasp the current status of systems biology and functional genomics, and to discuss the future direction of the field. We also aimed to stimulate international collaborations between scientists. The meeting included excellent presentations on gene and protein networks, biological systems controlling higher-order phenomena such as complex morphogenesis of organs of animals and plants, and gene regulatory networking of circadian rhythm. As a result of the meeting we realized some key issues that need to be addressed are the setting-up of experimental systems by which data with minimum noise can be obtained, comprehensive collection of data sets with different conditions or genetic backgrounds, a well-designed presentation of data that allows the extraction of biological significance, and the necessity of mathematical modeling to predict the principles behind biological phenomena. There is an ever increasing amount of biological data being accumulated by the achievements of large-scale biology such as genomic, proteomics, and phenomics, and therefore we certainly need sophisticated “Systems Biology”to make the best use of them.