I’m very pleased that the program for Beyond the Genome 2011 is now available on the conference website.  This BioMed Central conference, organised by our sister journal Genome Biology in conjunction with Genome Medicine,
is now in its second year and promises an exciting program of talks and
posters from key areas of post-genomic research in biology and
medicine, as well as a Genome Informatics Workshop the day before the conference. 

The sessions include internationally renowned speakers in a range of fields across biology and medicine. Of particular interest to me are those centred around the application of next-generation sequencing technologies to the fields of cancer and Mendelian disease.  I’m particularly looking forward
to the talks which herald the translation of genomic data into the
clinic.  This is a young field, but one of increasing importance – much
like Genome Medicine itself!  For example, one of the speakers in the
cancer session, Mark Boguski, is part of the pioneering Genomic Medicine Initiative
at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre, Boston, which has implemented a
training program in personalised medicine and genomics for
pathologists.  Another key speaker in this area is Stephen Kingsmore,
director of the Center for Pediatric Genomic Medicine at Children’s Mercy Hospital, Kansas City, whose work on a tool for detection of carriers of Mendelian disease made headlines earlier this year.  

The conference
is taking place on 19 – 22 September 2011, at The Universities at Shady
Grove, Rockville.  The organizing committee includes Elaine Mardis
(Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, USA), Karen Nelson
(J. Craig Venter Institute, Rockville, USA), Mike Schatz (Cold Spring
Harbor Laboratory, NY, USA), Jay Shendure (University of Washington,
Seattle, USA), and Genome Biology’s Editor, Clare Garvey.  

Early bird rates are available until this Friday (15th July), so if you have an abstract for oral or poster presentation which you’d like to submit, you should do so now!

I hope to see you there.

Rebecca Furlong

Executive Editor, Genome Medicine