Preface

A primary vision of Integrative Bioinformatics is the creation of a virtual cell. Cell Modeling and Visualization is an immense interdisciplinary task, bridging the gap between Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Design, and Informatics. For this purpose, in the context of the German Conference of Bioinformatics (28.09.- 01.10.2014), the first CELLmicrocosmos neXt workshop has taken place in Bielefeld University at the 28.09.2014. During this event, 10 years of the CELLmicrocosmos project were celebrated by presenting CELLmicrocosmos X and an additional hands-on workshop session. To evaluate the potential of cell visualization and the prospects for future collaborations, seven talks were presented at the CELLmicrocosmos neXt workshop. In addition, two chapters were added here discussing some current and future work on the CELLmicrocosmos project. Each of the extended abstracts contains a maximum of two pages. • Björn Sommer (Bielefeld University) started the workshop by showing “CELLmicrocosmos X”, giving a short resume of 10 years development during an integrative cell modeling project (Page 5f). • Niklas Biere et al. (Bielefeld University) presented a 3D stereoscopic animation of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, following the principles of cell visualization a