 In 2004 , ISMB was jointly held with the European Conference on Computational Biology for the first time . The conference was also co @-@ located with the Genes , Proteins and Computers conference . This meeting , held in Glasgow , UK , was the largest bioinformatics conference ever held , attended by 2 @,@ 136 delegates , submitting 496 scientific papers . Alfonso Valencia considers ISMB / ECCB 2004 to be an important milestone in the history of ISMB : " it was the first one where the balance between Europe and the States became an important part of the conference . It was here that we established the rules and the ways and the spirit of collaboration between the Americans and the Europeans . " The success of the joint conference paved the way for future European ISMB meetings to be held jointly with ECCB . 
