Advances in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology

The Brazilian Symposium on Bioinformatics (BSB) 2008 was held at Santo Andr´e(Sao ˜ Paulo), Brazil, August 28-30,2008. BSB 2008 was the third sym- sium in the BSB series, although BSB was preceded by the Brazilian Workshop on Bioinformatics(WOB). This previous event had three consecutiveeditions in 2002 (Gramado, Rio Grande do Sul), 2003 (Maca´ e, Rio de Janeiro), and 2004 (Bras´ ?lia, Distrito Federal). The change from workshop to symposium re?ects the increasing quality and interest behind this meeting. For BSB 2008, we had 41 submissions: 32 full papers and 9 extended - stracts, submitted to two tracks: the main track on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, and the track Applications of Agent Technologies and Mult- gent Systems to Computational Biology.The currentproceedings contain 14 full papers and5 extended abstractsthat wereaccepted. Thesepapers andabstracts were carefully refereed and selected by an international Program Committee of 35 members, with the help of 13 additional reviewers. We believe that this v- ume represents a ?ne contribution to current research in computational biology and bioinformatics, as well as in molecular biology.