NIGMS has funding available to bring together investigators for meetings on topics that address the goals of the consortium. At the first subgroup meeting in Fort Worth, we discussed the value of such a meeting and possible topics. A consensus emerged that a joint meeting with the Bioinformatics Subgroup, to be held at the NIH campus, would be of value (see the meeting report posted undeer the topic “Subgroup Goals” for more details).

While these meetings still need to be vetted through the CFG steering committee, with input from NIGMS, Will York and I have begun to discuss possible dates and topics. It is time to get input from the full subgroup. We would propose a meeting in mid/late April, probably around the weekend of April 18. The goal would be to bring together interested parties to continue the discussions initiated last year at the Warren Workshop. Since the Warren Workshops are biennial events, we hope that this meeting could be complementary, filling the gap between the Warren meetings.

Please suggest topics that you consider valuable. Here are a few possibilities:

Specific analytic challenges: sulfation, polymer characterization

Levels of confidence in assigning structures: building a consensus toward defined levels of structural characterization

High-throughput analysis of mass spectra: limitations and goals

Data mining: correlating glycan characterization with parameters that report biosynthetic capacity

Deep data mining: divining biological relevance from metadata