The present volume is dedicated to aspects of algorithmic work in bioinformat ics and computational biology with an emphasis on string algorithms that play a central role in the analysis of biological sequences. The papers included are a selection of articles corresponding to talks given at one of two meetings spon sored by The Royal Society, the UK's national academy of science, under grant no.: JEB/KOREAN Networks/16715. The grant supported two workshops organ- ised by researches from the Seoul National University (Korea) and King's College London (UK). The first workshop was held in Seoul, Korea, in July 2004 and the second meeting took place in London, UK, in February 2005 as part of the annual London Stringology Days.

The meetings have provided a forum for the presentation and discussion of on going research and current problems in the field. Especially topics like efficient data structures for the analysis and the storage of biological sequences, the design of efficient algorithms for the detection of various types of repeats in biological sequences, classification of gene sequences, and comparing genomes using repeat detection algorithms were in the centre of the workshop.