As algorithms evolve, computing power explodes, and scientists solve a greater number of 3-D protein structures, computer-aided design has the potential to dramatically cut the cost and time of drug discovery
Once upon a time, not long ago, HIV/AIDS was a scourge, killing anyone who contracted the deadly virus. Now, many people are living with the disease, which they control with drugs initially developed...
Jul, 01, 2007
Experts reflect on challenges identified ten years ago.
The first issue of this magazine (June 2005) featured a story called “Top Ten Challenges of the Next Decade” written by Eric Jakobssen, PhD, who had recently left his position as Director...
Jun, 18, 2014
Having developed detailed and sophisticated models of both E. Coli and human metabolism, researchers can begin to build toward a whole cell model that will be useful for the study of human health and disease.
If biologists really understood the functioning of the genome, they could in principle recreate it in silico. Instead of a choreographed swirl of molecules inside a living cell, electrons...
Oct, 01, 2008
Using computation, researchers narrow the search space for directed evolution; guide mutagenesis; and create de novo enzymes
Enzymes are among nature’s crowning achievements: they accelerate chemical reactions, making life possible. People have co-opted natural enzymes for industrial use for thousands of years (think...
Feb, 19, 2013
Computation offers a window into a disease often described as a black box
The growing threats of multi-drug resistant (MDR) and extensively drug resistant (XDR) tuberculosis (TB) are spurring worldwide interest in faster and more innovative research approaches, such as...
Jun, 06, 2012
Public databases impact not only how research is done but what kind of research is done in the first place.
The setting: a scientific conference in January 2008. The speaker, Bruce Ponder, MD, PhD, an oncology professor at Cambridge University, is describing a previously unknown link between a particular...
Oct, 01, 2008
A recognition of biocomputing's successes and a prediction of what's to come
The last ten years have seen huge leaps in biomedical computing. We now have new ways to integrate and understand vast quantities of data; the capacity for multi-scale biological modeling; and a...
bioinformatics tools, biomedical computing, CAD, computational modeling, data mining, disease surveillance, dynamic modeling, education, eric jakobsson, function prediction, genetic association, genome annotation, in silico screening, medical informatics, neuromodeling, prosthetics, sequence alignment, structure prediction, systems biology, systems biomedicine, telemedicine, tomography
Jun, 01, 2005
Six startups jockey for a place at the table. Who will succeed?
A handful of startups are wagering that genome interpretation is the next big thing.
Why is this business space so hot? “Once you can produce a better faster genome, thanks...
Jun, 20, 2013
Biomedical applications of ABMs are taking off.
In the early 1990s, when James A. Glazier, PhD, first became interested in
using agent-based modeling to simulate biological phenomena, the field was so new that he had to borrow ideas...
Sep, 01, 2013