Seeking a non-invasive approach to cancer diagnosis and prognosis
In a radiological image, a tumor’s edges might appear fuzzy or crisp; its shape could range from oval to many-lobed; and its density and texture might vary across the tumor. To determine...
Jun, 19, 2013
How increased coverage of the structure space is transforming the field of biology
When the human genome was completely sequenced in 2003, researchers were already pondering how biomedicine could make use of it. One hope was that the sequences would lead to a greater...
Jan, 01, 2010
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
Can the complexities of biology be boiled down to Amazon.com-style recommendations? The examples here suggest possible pathways to an intelligent healthcare system with big data at its core.
“We have recommendations for you,” announces the website Amazon.com each time a customer signs in.
This mega-retailer analyzes billions of customers’ purchases—nearly $...
Jan, 02, 2012
A new media artwork explores novel ways to represent and intuitively understand nature in the metagenomic era
What’s it like to be immersed in a dataset of millions of DNA sequences? Audiences of ATLAS in silico—a new media artwork that explores novel ways to represent and intuitively understand...
Oct, 01, 2008
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
And people are starting to notice
In 1991, a prescient editorial in Nature by Harvard’s Walter Gilbert, PhD, (“Towards a paradigm shift in biology”) included these observations on the utility and impact of computing...
Apr, 01, 2006
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
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
Bioinformatics and computational biology enable microbiome research
This past June, 200 members of the NIH-funded Human Microbiome Project (HMP) Consortium published a slew of papers offering fresh insights into the role microbial communities play in the human body...
Oct, 22, 2012
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