According to a new computational analysis of DNA structure, variations in DNA shape—along the grooves of the double helix—may play an important role in defining how the genome works. The...
Jul, 01, 2009
Still unknown: Whether they can get inside cells
Recent research illustrates a nightmare scenario for nanotechnology: simulated particles called buckyballs eagerly glomming onto nearby DNA. The study, published in Biophysical Journal in December...
Apr, 01, 2006
They're more than just pretty pictures adorning office walls and presentation slides. Beamed into operating room computer monitors, they're guiding the scalpels of brain surgeons. Dancing...
Jan, 01, 2012
The National Institutes of Health Roadmap for Medical Research has recently completed the first stage of an ambitious program to expand the computational infrastructure and software tools needed to...
Jan, 01, 2006
A virtual lab rat; simulated DNA; an artificial pancreas; & integrating mental health data
Several biomedical computing projects received multi-million dollar funding in the fall of 2011, including efforts to: simulate the cardiac physiology of the rat; build a state-of-the-art DNA...
Jan, 02, 2012
Hidden Markov models estimate DNA loop kinetics
The hidden Markov model—a statistical model used for decades in fields as diverse as speech recognition and climatology—has received an update and a new application. Researchers at the...
Apr, 01, 2007
Hi-C technique looks at chromosomes at unprecedented level of resolution
Try taking a human hair as long as Manhattan and cramming it—unsnarled—inside a marble. This is the challenge faced by a 2-meter-long strand of DNA as it folds into its compact array of...
Jan, 01, 2010
Computer reconstruction of electron microscope images reveals surprising bends in viral DNA.
The phi29 bacteriophage is an efficient infection machine—it fires its genome into a host bacterium, hijacks the host’s cellular equipment, and assembles an army of new viruses for its...
Oct, 01, 2008
A model of chromatin explores how it folds and unfolds
To fit an organism’s DNA into a single cell, it has to be tightly compacted, first wound around proteins to form chromatin fibers, then further coiled into chromosomes. Computer simulations by...
Sep, 01, 2005
Try packing a two-meter-long stretch of DNA into a cell nucleus just a few millionths of a meter thick—with key coding segments readily accessible. It’s a seemingly impossible feat that...
Oct, 01, 2009