Complex Traits: Genomics and Computational Approaches

Organizer(s): Eric Schadt, Stephen H. Friend and Iya G. Khalil

Supported by the Directors' Fund

Summary of Meeting:

Complex traits are driven by constellations of genetic and environmental factors interacting in complex ways. Genetic and environmental perturbations do not directly lead to disease but, rather, impact molecular processes that underlie physiological states associated with disease. Therefore, in order to develop a complete understanding of complex traits like disease, biological systems must be queried in a comprehensive fashion in multiple dimensions. Different data dimensions like genotype, gene expression, proteomic and metabolomic offer complementary views that are useful individually and exceptionally valuable collectively. Without mastering the large-scale molecular data that underlies pathophysiological states, without sophisticated mathematical algorithms capable of data integration, and without an appropriate informatics infrastructure to apply these algorithms and translate the results into manageable bites of information that can be consumed by physicians and patients, efforts to realize the dream of personalized medicine will be difficult to achieve. Towards this end of realizing the promise of personalized medicine, the Keystone Symposia meeting on Complex Traits: Genomics and Computational Approaches will focus on three different areas: 1) methods for integrating diverse, large-scale, high-dimensional data with clinical phenotypes to construct predictive models (e.g., networks) of disease; 2) application of integrative biology approaches that combine large-scale molecular and clinical phenotype information to elucidate the underlying causes of disease and to prioritize drug targets and biomarkers; and 3) technological advances that will drive a dramatic explosion in data that will enable better models of disease and solutions to address the problem of how to enable others to share big data, interact with complex models and refine those models to improve our understanding of disease and associated biological processes.

Scholarship Deadline: October 20 2011

Discounted Abstract Deadline: October 20 2011

Abstract Deadline: December 1 2011

Discounted Registration Deadline: January 4 2012

We gratefully acknowledge additional support for this conference from:

We gratefully acknowledge additional in-kind support for this conference from those foregoing speaker expense reimbursements:

Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research

Pacific Biosciences

We appreciate the organizations that provide Keystone Symposia with additional support, such as marketing and advertising:

We appreciate the organizations that provide Keystone Symposia with additional support, such as marketing and advertising:

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Special thanks to the following for their support of Keystone Symposia initiatives to increase participation at this meeting by scientists from underrepresented backgrounds:

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