This volume of the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science series contains the contributions presented at the International Symposium on Knowledge Exploration in Life Science Informatics (KELSI 2004) held in Milan, Italy, 25-26 November 2004. The two main objectives of the symposium were: • To explore the symbiosis between information and knowledge technologies and v- ious life science disciplines, such as biochemistry, biology, neuroscience, medical research, social sciences, and so on. • To investigate the synergy among different life science informatics areas, including cheminformatics,bioinformatics,neuroinformatics,medical informatics,systems - ology, socionics, and others. Modern life sciences investigate phenomena and systems at the level of molecules, cells, tissues, organisms, and populations. Typical areas of interest include natural e- lution, development,disease, behavior,cognition,and consciousness.This quest is g- eratinganoverwhelmingandfast-growingamountofdata,information,andknowledge, re?ecting living systems at different levels of organization. Future progress of the life sciences will depend on effective and ef?cient management, sharing, and exploitation of these resources by computational means.
