The OBF Conference call is scheduled for 12:30PM to 2PM PST on Wednesday Nov 19, 2008.  Members of the Open Bioinformatics Foundation and those interested in the decisions are invited to listen in and participate.  A brief agenda is available here. Please email Hilmar Lapp at hlapp _AT_ gmx.net for call in number and codes if you wish to participate or listen to the discussion.

Agenda Old Business Approval of minutes from 2007 New Business Current Board Confirm past term expirations of those who did not run again for the Board. What to do about the Secretary seat? Some of the items on the agenda here need a legitimate vote by the Board (with prior notification and quorum satisfied). Should plan for a (presumably virtual) voting Board meeting soon afterwards. How can we better ensure quorum?

The OBF board meeting will be held via conference call on Nov 19, from 12:30PM to 2PM PST.  Agenda items and information about participating is available on the agenda webpage. We anticipate this call primarily to manage administrative tasks for the foundation. We welcome input on including more members in the OBF leadership and helping set the direction for the foundation.

We are pleased to announce a beta release of Biopython 1.49. There are been some significant changes since Biopython 1.48 was released two months ago, which is why we are initially releasing a beta for wider testing.

Many of you will be aware that Python 2.6 was released a month ago (October 1st, 2008). This supports a lot of new syntax and functionality, but also deprecates some old modules (e.g. the sets module). While Biopython 1.48 does mostly work with Python 2.6, we’ve been testing with Python 2.6 and have fixed a number of deprecations or breakages in our CVS repository.

To date, Biopython releases have relied on the original numerical python library, Numeric (used in python with “import Numeric”).  In the next release we will at last be moving to its successor, NumPy (used in python with “import numpy”). This transition is already under way in the Biopython source code repository.

We are pleased to announce the release of Biopython 1.48. Some new functionality has been added, a few bugs have been fixed, the documentation has been updated, plus several obsolete modules have been deprecated (or explicitly labelled as obsolete). The following additional file formats are now supported in Bio.SeqIO and Bio.AlignIO: reading and writing “tab” format (simple tab separated) writing “nexus” files reading “pir” files (NBRF/PIR)

This is a belated news entry announcing the second BioSQL v1.0 (code-named Tokyo) release, v1.0.1, which was made on August 2, 2008. It is available from the BioSQL downloads page. This version of the schema should be fully backwards compatible with the v1.0.0 schema for nearly all software and queries. The only change is relaxing a column width constraint. Migration scripts are for those who want to simply upgrade their existing database.

We are pleased to announce the release of Biopython 1.47. This release includes a new Bio.AlignIO module, updates to Bio.Blast, parsers for NCBI’s Entrez E-Utilities, numerous other code improvements and fixes, and an extended and updated documentation. In particular if you use Biopython to access NCBI’s E-Utilities, we encourage you to download and install this release to ensure full compliance with NCBI’s access rules.

The BOSC 2008 Organizing Committee is pleased to announce that Julian Lombardi will be giving the keynote address this year. Dr. Lombardi is one of the original architects of the open-source, peer-to-peer OpenCroquet platform for creating and deploying deeply collaborative multi-user online applications and virtual worlds. For further information about Dr. Lombardi, see the Wikipedia entry about him, his blog, and the OpenCroquet website.

We are pleased to announce the release of Biopython 1.45. This release includes numerous code improvements and fixes, including in Bio.Seq, Bio.SeqIO, Bio.Entrez, Bio.PopGen, Bio.SwissProt, Bio.Cluster, Bio.SCOP, Bio.InterPro, Bio.GenBank, Bio.ExPASy, BioSQL, and the Biopython documentation. Too many to list them all here! Source distributions and Windows installers are available from the Biopython website at http://biopython.org.