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Editorial
Scottish Centre for Genomic Technology and Informatics, University of Edinburgh Medical School, The Chancellor's Building, Edinburgh EH16 4SB, UK
European Bioinformatics Institute, EMBL-EBI, The Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridgeshire CB10 1SD, UK
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THE RICH DIVERSITY OF GENOMICS—A REPORT ON THE ‘COMPARATIVE AND FUNCTIONAL GENOMICS (BITS) WORKSHOP’, HINXTON, UK, 27–30 OCTOBER 2005
The Comparative and Functional Genomics (BITS) Workshop has a history that in many ways reflects the changing face of modern genomics. Started 15 years ago under the banner of ‘Identification of the Transcribed Sequence’, the meeting was designed to bring together leading researchers from around the world who were pioneering new global approaches to gene discovery in a small workshop setting. As more and more transcribed sequences became known, the emphasis of the meeting, like the community it served, focused on how to characterize the function of all the newly acquired genes. A decision was therefore made to change its name to ‘Beyond the Identification of the Transcribed Sequence Workshop’, or BITS for short. As the years have passed the meeting has continued to diversify and change (as has its name), but it has continued to attract scientists to the cutting edge of genomics research. At this year's meeting, hosted