edited by Ernst-Walter Knapp (Free University Berlin, Germany), Gary Benson (Boston University, USA), Herman-Georg Holzhütter (Charité University Medicine Berlin, Germany), Minoru Kanehisa (Kyoto University, Japan), & Satoru Miyano (University of Tokyo, Japan)

This volume contains 25 peer-reviewed papers based on the presentations at the 8th Annual International Workshop on Bioinformatics and Systems Biology (IBSB 2008) held at the Teikyo Hotel, Zeuten Lake, near Berlin, from June 9 to June 10, 2008. This workshop started in 2001 as an event for doctoral students and young researchers to present and discuss their research results and approaches in bioinformatics and systems biology. It is part of a collaborative educational program involving leading institutions and leaders committed to the following programs and partner institutions:

• Boston (Gary Benson) — Graduate Program in Bioinformatics, Boston University

• Berlin (Herman-Georg Holzhütter) — The International Research Training Group (IRTG) “Genomics and Systems Biology of Molecular Networks”

• Kyoto/Tokyo (Minoru Kanehisa/Satoru Miyano) — Joint Bioinformatics Education Program of Kyoto University and University of Tokyo.

• Exploring the Effect of Variable Enzyme Concentrations in a Kinetic Model of Yeast Glycolysis (J Bruck et al.)
• Estimation of Nonlinear Gene Regulatory Networks via L1 Regularized NVAR from Time Series Gene Expression Data (K Kojima et al.)
• Comparing Flux Balance Analysis to Network Expansion: Producibility, Sustainability and the Scope of Compounds (K Kruse & O Ebenhöh)
• Biosynthetic Potentials from Species-Specific Metabolic Networks (G Basler et al.)
• Comparative Determination of Biomass Composition in Differentially Active Metabolic States (H-C Chiu & D Segrè)
• The Relationship between Fine Scale DNA Structure, GC Content, and Functional Elements in 1% of the Human Genome (S C J Parker et al.)
• Toxicity versus Potency: Elucidation of Toxicity Properties Discriminating between Toxins, Drugs, and Natural Compounds (S Struck et al.)
• Comparative VEGF Receptor Tyrosine Kinase Modeling for the Development of Highly Specific Inhibitors of Tumor Angiogenesis (U Schmidt et al.)
• Network Analysis of Adverse Drug Interactions (M Takarabe et al.)
• Web-Links as a Means to Document Annotated Sequence and 3D-Structure Alignments in Systems Biology (C Gille et al.)