Bioinformatics is a discipline that aims to perform analysis of complex biological systems using a computer science approach, with the result of producing huge amounts of data. The major issue is represented by the need to turn this information into real knowledge, therefore the potential of exploiting parallel computing and distributed solutions in this field is clear. Porting applications and developing new systems on computer clusters improves performance when addressing genome wide analysis. Moreover, distributed technology such as Grid computing represents an emerging solution for establishing platforms to deal with data produced using new high throughput technology and gives researchers scalable solutions. The aim of this special session is to present the latest efforts in parallel and distributed bioinformatics applications in grid computing. We are especially interested in parallel algorithms and libraries for biological analysis and tools to perform large scale computation on distributed platforms like the Grid.