That's one small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind – a quote infamous for two reasons: the first words uttered by a man on the moon, and the answer to the feared 'Bioinformatics Challenge' at the most recent incarnation of Beyond The Genome, a conference run annually by Genome Biology and our sister journal Genome Medicine.

The challenge, run each year on the conference's Informatics day, involves the deciphering of a hidden code within a package of sequence data, using all the computational biology skills that the participants can muster. It's a race against the clock, and the winner is awarded with what we describe in all modesty as a truly awesome prize.

A special DNA Day challenge
In honor of the 60th anniversary of the publication of the three Nature papers that first described the structure of DNA, Genome Biology is running a special ultra-tricky Bioinformatics Challenge in April that will be open to all comers. Unlike the usual one-step puzzle run at Beyond The Genome conferences, the DNA Day challenge will consist of a number of steps unfolding over a number of days. It was on April 25th 1953 that Watson & Crick, Franklin & Gosling, and Wilkins, Stokes & Wilson shared the secret of DNA with the world, and it will be exactly 60 years later – on April 25th 2013 – that the final step of our bonus Bioinformatics Challenge will be unleashed on the world.

Please keep an eye on our blog and Twitter feed for more updates, including details of how to participate.

Update: More details about the Challenge are now available here.