Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) events encompass processes as varied as the exchange of genetic material between microbes coexisting in the same environment, between symbiotic bacteria and their eukaryotic hosts, and the evolution of organelles by symbiosis, in which whole genomes are acquired. In Horizontal Gene Transfer: Genomes in Flux, expert researchers contribute an overview of HGT concepts as well as specific case histories that highlight the most current progress to inspire future work. Divided into three sections, the volume begins with an overview of terminology, concepts and the implications of HGT on current evolutionary thought and philosophy, and continues with methods involving computer and bioinformatics analyses of genomic data as well as molecular biology techniques for identifying, quantifying, and differentiating instances of HGT. A section of case studies follows, which provides detailed accounts of how HGT has shaped evolution across the diversity of organisms and organismal lineages. As a volume of the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology (TM) series, this work provides the kind of detailed description and implementation advice that is crucial for getting optimal results. Cutting-edge and thoroughly detailed, Horizontal Gene Transfer: Genomes in Flux examines how HGT has contributed to genome evolution and how understanding HGT impacts our ability to accurately reconstruct and comprehend the web-like evolutionary history in order to aid scientists in furthering their own research.

th The 6 International Symposium on Bioinformatics Research and Applications (ISBRA2010)washeldduringMay23-26,2010attheUniversityofConnecticut, Storrs, Connecticut. The symposium provided a forum for the exchange of new results and ideas among researchers, developers, and practitioners working on all aspects of bioinformatics, computational biology, and their applications. The program of the symposium included 20 contributed papers selected by the ProgramCommittee from 57 submissions received in response to the call for papers. The symposium also included poster presentations and featured invited keynote talks by six distinguished speakers: Catalin Barbacioru from Life Te- nologies spoke on tracing the early cell divisions of mouse embryos by single cell RNA-seq, Piotr Berman from Pennsylvania State University spoke on successes and failures of elegant algorithms in computational biology, Mark Gerstein from Yale University spoke on human genome annotation, Ivan Ovcharenko from the National Center for Biotechnology Information spoke on the structure of pro- mal and distant regulatory elements in the human genome, Laxmi Parida from the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center spoke on combinatorics in recombi- tional population genomics, and Mona Singh from Princeton University spoke on predicting and analyzing cellular networks. We would like to thank the Program Committee members and external - viewers for volunteering their time to review and discuss symposium papers.