It's an exhilarating time for genome-wide association studies
For the past few months it seemed you couldn’t open a journal without reading results of a new genome-wide association study. The results kept pouring in: four studies in April showing seven...
Oct, 01, 2007
Decades of steady progress in pharmacogenetics have unearthed hundreds of associations between genes and drug response. But the field has to solve some theoretical and practical issues before it can deliver on the promise of personalized drug therapy.
As algorithms go, it’s deceptively simple. Just add together eight weighted pieces of patient information—age, height, weight, race, data about two genes, and a pair of clinical...
Jul, 01, 2009
There is growing recognition that epigenetics may be just as important as genetics in human health and disease.
In the early 19th century, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck explained evolution as the inheritance of acquired traits; he believed that changes due to behaviors and exposures in one generation could be passed...
Jun, 01, 2010
A unique opportunity to build both flexibility and high performance into a piece of software.
OpenCL is a cross-platform language for doing general purpose computation on graphics processing units (GPUs) and other massively parallel architectures. One of its most interesting features is the...
Apr, 01, 2010
Researchers are not simply retrieving and repackaging what is already known, but are also deriving new knowledge by discovering connections that were previously unnoticed.
Not long ago, reading biomedical literature involved hours in the library combing through rows of dusty periodicals—not to mention pocketfuls of change for the copy machine. Now, although the...
Jul, 01, 2008
Database automatically mines literature for drug-gene relationships--and does it as well as manually curated databases.
When a drug saves one person but makes another ill, a bitter lesson in genetic differences often follows. With many such lessons already under our collective belts, researchers are using existing...
Jan, 01, 2010
Diabetes, breast cancer, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease. All are associated with several genes’ alleles interacting in complex ways with one another and the environment. Now,...
Jul, 01, 2007
Refining the practical applications of the science in Personalized Cancer Treatment: Seeking Cures Through Computation
Gene expression signatures that stratify patients into likely and...
Jan, 02, 2012
Disentangling the different types of skeptics and what modelers can learn from each.
What are the telltale signs of a modeling talk at a biology conference? Just look for the sighs, shifting, and eye-rolling in the audience, says Donald C. Bolser, PhD, professor of physiological...
Jun, 05, 2012
Epistasis explored
When people work together, some individuals may hinder team performance—essentially masking the abilities of other members—while others may boost the group’s performance beyond the...
Sep, 01, 2011
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