Francois-Joseph LaPointe, University of Montreal, lapoinf@ere.umontreal.ca
Fred McMorris, Illinois Institute of Technology, mcmorris@iit.edu
Boris Mirkin, University of London, mirkin@dcs.bbk.ac.uk
Fred Roberts, Rutgers University, froberts@dimacs.rutgers.edu
Presented under the auspices of the
Special Focus on Computational Molecular Biology.
Consensus methods developed in the context of voting, decision making,
and other areas of the social and behavioral sciences have begun to
have a variety of applications in the biological sciences, originally
in taxonomy and evolutionary biology, and more recently in molecular
biology. Typically, several alternatives (such as possible
taxonomies, alternative phylogenetic trees, alternative molecular
sequences, or alternative alignments) are produced using different
methods or under different models and then one needs to find a
consensus solution. There are, already, several hundred papers in
this developing field of "BioConsensus." In this workshop, we will
explore ways to make use of the consensus methods of social choice
theory in solving problems of biology, with emphasis on molecular
biology.
Here are several of the major themes of the workshop. How have
consensus methods of social choice theory already found use in
biology? In turn, how have some of the specific problems of the
biological sciences given rise to new concepts of consensus?
Algorithms for some of the well-known consensus methods of social
choice theory have the potential for application to biology, with
appropriate modification, but many of these consensus problems are
NP-complete in their most general setting and call for approximate
algorithms or heuristic methods. What would be involved in applying
traditional consensus methods to molecular biology problems?
Consensus methods in molecular biology tend to be chosen because they
seem mathematically interesting or useful rather than on the basis of
any reasonable biological model. What is a reasonable basis for
choosing a consensus method? Are there reasonable axioms having
biological meaning that characterize different consensus methods?
This workshop will bring together mathematicians, computer scientists,
and biological scientists to discuss these and other issues. The
workshop should be viewed as forming a basis for a continuing dialog
that will lead to future collaborations. In particular, we are hoping
to have a follow-up workshop six to twelve months after this one.
Directly following the workshop, there will be a DIMACS distinguished
lecture by Gene Myers, Vice President of Celera Genomics, on the topic
"Whole Genome Assemblies of the Drosophila and Human Genomes".
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