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
Computers and human experts duke it out over who is better at diagnosing disease, interpreting images, or predicting protein structure
Dorothy Rosenthal tenses over her microscope, peering at the problematic nucleus on the Pap smear yet again. “It’s abnormal,” she decides, and then hesitates. “No, it’s...
Jul, 01, 2006
Connectivity Map helps connect drugs and diseases
Normal cells, diseased cells and cells on drugs share a common language: They all produce their own patterns of gene expression. And the patterns can be compared in useful ways—given a disease...
Jan, 01, 2007
Molecular dynamics simulations spot alternative drug target
A blindside attack on HIV-1 protease might just combat drug-resistant strains of HIV, according to simulations run by researchers at the University of California, San Diego. When the simulations shut...
Oct, 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
From hardened software to scientific productivity, the NCBCs have changed the landscape for biomedical computing. What will happen when their funding expires?
It has been eight years since the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded the first National Centers for Biomedical Computing (NCBCs). With two or three years remaining in the program (...
Oct, 19, 2012
How some tools are already impacting patients
Medical decision-making is often more art than science, requiring physicians to exercise judgment in the face of complex factual circumstances. But now a few tools offer the opportunity to...
Apr, 01, 2011
A computer algorithm manipulates antibodies to predict which forms will bind their targets more tightly
The word “antibody” conjures images of our bodies fighting off bacteria and viruses. But because they can latch onto their targets with great precision, antibodies are also used to treat...
Jan, 01, 2008
Using computational models, researchers are gaining traction toward understanding what makes a stem cell a stem cell; how gene expression drives stem cell differentiation; why studying stem cell heterogeneity is important; and, ultimately, how stem cells control their fate.
To the casual observer, stem cells offer the almost magical promise of—Voila!—turning into exactly the kind of cell needed to repair an injured spinal cord or replace a damaged organ. And...
Apr, 01, 2010
Structure-prediction algorithm searches for most likely conformation
If you want to find a Tab ‘A’ that will fit into a Slot ‘B’, you’ll waste a lot of time if you don’t know the shape of the slot. For scientists trying to design...
Jul, 01, 2006