Last week marked two important milestones in the deadly 2011 European E. coli 0104:H4 outbreak: the Robert Koch institute announcing the end of the outbreak, and the publication of several papers from the many groups sequencing the pathogen.

I just got back from attending the IBRO World Congress in Florence and the CNS*2011 meeting in Stockholm.  All I can say is: lucky me. Okay, clearly that’s not all I can say.  They were both wonderful meetings and it was great to see so much good neuroscience going on.  IBRO had quite the turnout with 4,200 people attending this year.

So that’s ISMB over for another year. The worlds computational biologists are now sleeping off their Austrian wine and Sacher Torte hangovers on flights back home, hopefully inspired and brimming with fresh ideas for the next year. On the whole it seemed a productive and positive meeting, and whilst personal perspectives always differ depending on the tracks attended, there did seem to be several recurring themes.

In this era of “big-data” and supposed data-tsunamis, being able to sift through the vast swathes of information and find what you are looking will become more and more important.

After the launch of the GigScience website last week, and a call for papers this week, it’s now time to start  meeting and talking with potential authors. After a busy batch of conferences hosted by the BGI, including the  first meeting of the Earth Microbiome Project (see the slides and video of our talk) and last weeks Bio-IT APAC

As biological data is now produced faster than it can easily be handled and stored, the dissemination of this data has become a major bottleneck.