This book aims to promote the interaction among the scientific community to discuss applications of CS/AI with an interdisciplinary character, exploring the interactions between sub-areas of CS/AI, bioinformatics, chemoinformatics, and systems biology. The success of bioinformatics in recent years has been prompted by research in molecular biology and molecular medicine in several initiatives. This year’s technical program presents both high quality and diversity, with contributions in well-established and evolving areas of research. The PACBB’23 technical program has selected 9 full papers in the main track and, as in past editions, it will be special issues in ranked journals. This symposium is organized by the LASI and Centro Algoritmi of the University of Minho (Portugal). The authors would like to thank all the contributing authors, the members of the program committee, national associations (AEPIA, APPIA), and the sponsors (AIR Institute).

This book aims to promote the interaction among the scientific community to discuss applications of CS/AI with an interdisciplinary character, exploring the interactions between sub-areas of CS/AI, bioinformatics, chemoinformatics, and systems biology. The success of bioinformatics in recent years has been prompted by research in molecular biology and molecular medicine in several initiatives. This year's technical program presents both high quality and diversity, with contributions in well-established and evolving areas of research. The PACBB'23 technical program has selected 9 full papers in the main track and, as in past editions, it will be special issues in ranked journals. This symposium is organized by the LASI and Centro Algoritmi of the University of Minho (Portugal). The authors would like to thank all the contributing authors, the members of the program committee, national associations (AEPIA, APPIA), and the sponsors (AIR Institute).

This book is suitable for researchers and practitioners in biology, medicine and health sciences and bioinformatics. The success of bioinformatics and computational biology in recent years has been driven by research through computational tools and techniques that are essential for data analysis in modern biology and medicine. Systems biology is a related research area that has been replacing the reductionist view that dominated biology research in the last decades, requiring the coordinated efforts of biological researchers with those related to data analysis, mathematical modelling, computer simulation and optimization. The accumulation and exploitation of large-scale databases prompt new computational technology and for research into these issues. In this context, many widely successful computational models and tools used by biologists in these initiatives, such as clustering and classification methods for gene expression data, are based on computer science/ artificial intelligence (CS/AI) techniques. In fact, these methods have been helping in tasks related to knowledge discovery, modelling and optimization tasks, aiming at the development of computational models so that the response of biological complex systems to any perturbation can be predicted. This proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Practical Applications of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (PACBB), held in L’Aquila (Italy) from July 13 to 15, 2022, contains ten original contributions of authors from many different countries (Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and UK) and different subfields in bioinformatics and computational biology. It is also suitable for artificial intelligence researchers interested in exploring applications in biology and health sciences and computational models.

This book features novel research papers spanning many different subfields in bioinformatics and computational biology, presenting the latest research on the practical applications to promote fruitful interactions between young researchers in different areas related to the field. Clearly, biology is increasingly becoming a science of information, requiring tools from the computational sciences. To address these challenges, we have seen the emergence of a new generation of interdisciplinary scientists with a strong background in the biological and computational sciences. PACBB'21 expects to contribute to this effort by encouraging a successful collaboration of researchers in different areas related to bioinformatics. The PACBB'21 technical program included 17 papers covering many different subfields in bioinformatics and computational biology. Therefore, this conference, held in Salamanca (Spain), definitely promotes the collaboration of scientists from different research groups and with different backgrounds (computer scientists, mathematicians, biologists) to reach breakthrough solutions for these challenges.

This proceedings presents recent practical applications of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. It contains the proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Practical Applications of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics held at University of Salamanca, Spain, at June 3rd-5th, 2015. The International Conference on Practical Applications of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics (PACBB) is an annual international meeting dedicated to emerging and challenging applied research in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. Biological and biomedical research are increasingly driven by experimental techniques that challenge our ability to analyse, process and extract meaningful knowledge from the underlying data. The impressive capabilities of next generation sequencing technologies, together with novel and ever evolving distinct types of omics data technologies, have put an increasingly complex set of challenges for the growing fields of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. The analysis of the datasets produced and their integration call for new algorithms and approaches from fields such as Databases, Statistics, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Optimization, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. Clearly, Biology is more and more a science of information requiring tools from the computational sciences.

Biological and biomedical research are increasingly driven by experimental techniques that challenge our ability to analyse, process and extract meaningful knowledge from the underlying data. The impressive capabilities of next-generation sequencing technologies, together with novel and constantly evolving, distinct types of omics data technologies, have created an increasingly complex set of challenges for the growing fields of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. The analysis of the datasets produced and their integration call for new algorithms and approaches from fields such as Databases, Statistics, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Optimization, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. Clearly, Biology is more and more a science of information and requires tools from the computational sciences. In the last few years, we have seen the rise of a new generation of interdisciplinary scientists with a strong background in the biological and computational sciences. In this context, the interaction of researchers from different scientific fields is, more than ever, of foremost importance in boosting the research efforts in the field and contributing to the education of a new generation of Bioinformatics scientists. The PACBB’17 conference was intended to contribute to this effort and promote this fruitful interaction, with a technical program that included 39 papers spanning many different sub-fields in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. Further, the conference promoted the interaction of scientists from diverse research groups and with a distinct background (computer scientists, mathematicians, biologists).

The growth in the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology fields over the last few years has been remarkable and the trend is to increase its pace. In fact, the need for computational techniques that can efficiently handle the huge amounts of data produced by the new experimental techniques in Biology is still increasing driven by new advances in Next Generation Sequencing, several types of the so called omics data and image acquisition, just to name a few. The analysis of the datasets that produces and its integration call for new algorithms and approaches from fields such as Databases, Statistics, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Optimization, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. Within this scenario of increasing data availability, Systems Biology has also been emerging as an alternative to the reductionist view that dominated biological research in the last decades. Indeed, Biology is more and more a science of information requiring tools from the computational sciences. In the last few years, we have seen the surge of a new generation of interdisciplinary scientists that have a strong background in the biological and computational sciences. In this context, the interaction of researchers from different scientific fields is, more than ever, of foremost importance boosting the research efforts in the field and contributing to the education of a new generation of Bioinformatics scientists. PACBB‘12 hopes to contribute to this effort promoting this fruitful interaction. PACBB'12 technical program included 32 papers from a submission pool of 61 papers spanning many different sub-fields in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. Therefore, the conference will certainly have promoted the interaction of scientists from diverse research groups and with a distinct background (computer scientists, mathematicians, biologists). The scientific content will certainly be challenging and will promote the improvement of the work that is being developed by each of the participants.

The growth in the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology fields over the last few years has been remarkable and the trend is to increase its pace. In fact, the need for computational techniques that can efficiently handle the huge amounts of data produced by the new experimental techniques in Biology is still increasing driven by new advances in Next Generation Sequencing, several types of the so called omics data and image acquisition, just to name a few. The analysis of the datasets that produces and its integration call for new algorithms and approaches from fields such as Databases, Statistics, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Optimization, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. Within this scenario of increasing data availability, Systems Biology has also been emerging as an alternative to the reductionist view that dominated biological research in the last decades. Indeed, Biology is more and more a science of information requiring tools from the computational sciences. In the last few years, we have seen the surge of a new generation of interdisciplinary scientists that have a strong background in the biological and computational sciences. In this context, the interaction of researchers from different scientific fields is, more than ever, of foremost importance boosting the research efforts in the field and contributing to the education of a new generation of Bioinformatics scientists. PACBB‘11 hopes to contribute to this effort promoting this fruitful interaction. PACBB'11 technical program included 50 papers from a submission pool of 78 papers spanning many different sub-fields in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. Therefore, the conference will certainly have promoted the interaction of scientists from diverse research groups and with a distinct background (computer scientists, mathematicians, biologists). The scientific content will certainly be challenging and will promote the improvement of the work that is being developed by each of the participants.

This book highlights the latest research on practical applications of computational biology and bioinformatics, and addresses emerging experimental and sequencing techniques that are posing new challenges for bioinformatics and computational biology. Successfully applying these techniques calls for new algorithms and approaches from fields such as statistics, data mining, machine learning, optimization, computer science, and artificial intelligence. In response to these challenges, we have seen the rise of a new generation of interdisciplinary scientists with a strong background in the biological and computational sciences.These proceedings include 21 papers covering many different subfields of bioinformatics and computational biology. Focusing on interdisciplinary applications that combine e.g. bioinformatics, chemoinformatics, and system biology, they are intended to promote the collaboration of scientists from different research groups and with different backgrounds (computer scientists, mathematicians, biologists) to reach breakthrough solutions and overcome the challenges outlined above.