The International Conference on Functional and Comparative Genomics & Pharmacogenomics (Genomics-2013) was organized by the OMICS Group during November 12-14, 2013 at DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Chicago-North Shore, IL, USA. The conference was well received with participation from Genomics-2013 Organizing Committee Members, researchers, scientists, technologists and students from various parts of the world. The three day program witnessed thought provoking speeches from experts which focused on the theme “Recent Research Methodologies and Discoveries in Genomics Era”. The theme touched upon various topics like

•    Functional and Comparative Genomics
•    Pharmacogenomics and Personalized medicine
•    Evolutionary and Developmental Genomics
•    Bioinformatics in Genomics & Proteomics
•    Cancergenomics
•    Epigenomics, Transcriptomics and Non-coding genomics
•    Genome Sequencing & Mapping
•    Plant & Ecological Genomics
•    Biomarkers & Molecular Markers

The Conference has gathered support from The European Society of Pharmacogenomics and Theranostics (ESPT), The Nestle Institute of Health Sciences and Geneticational.

Genomics-2013 has swirl up the scientific thoughts on various current genome research related areas. The conference has shown scope of pharmacogenomics (studies of how variations in the human genome affect response to the drugs) and its implications in global health and pharma industry. The conference focused on how pharmacogenomics aids in diagnosing genetic information thus helping to predict not only patient’s drug response but also many other effects like adverse drug effects and their interactions and the diseases related to that gene. The conference was initiated with a series of invited lectures delivered by both Honorable Guests and members of the Keynote Forum.

Clyde A. Hutchison, Distinguished Investigator from J. Craig Venter Institute, USA who helped in determining the first complete sequence of a DNA molecule (phiX174) and developed site-directed mutagenesis with Michael Smith (1978) delivered a phenomenal and worthy keynote presentation on Building a minimal cell – The JCVI design-build-test cycle for synthetic cells during the conference.

Roger Hendrix, Distinguished Professor from University of Pittsburgh, USA explained how he and his group are involved in Genomic analysis of bacteriophages.

William C. Reinhold from National Cancer Institute, NIH, USA presented his speech on “The current state of comparative genomics and pharmacogenomics, and the application of the NCI-60 resources and CellMiner tools to these problems”.

The conference was chaired by Alexander Bolshoy, Yasuo Iwadate, Gil Atzmon, Gary A. Bulla, Jatinder Lamba, William C. Reinhold, Luciano Brocchieri and Ning-Sun Yang.

Along with the participants of Genomics-2013, we would like to express our gratitude to Dr. Alexander Bolshoy and Dr. William C. Reinhold for their extreme support and assistance towards the conference.

Students from various parts of the world took active participation in poster presentations. Mr. Aren Ewing and Mr. Chih-Yao Hsu were awarded with best posters for their outstanding contribution.

OMICS Group also took the privilege of felicitating Genomics-2013 Organizing Committee, Editorial Board Members of Journal of Data Mining in Genomics and Proteomics, Journal of Pharmacogenomics and Pharmacoproteomics, Journal of Phylogenetics and Evolutionary Biology and Journal of Proteomics and Bioinformatics, Keynote Speakers,  Chair and Co-Chairs whose support led the conference into the path of excellence.

The warm support and suggestions from all the participants, inspires us in organizing “2nd International Conference on Genomics & Pharmacogenomics” which will be held during September 08-09, 2014 Raleigh, USA.