Simplified model catches essential details of how DNA complements find their matches
Until now, scientists have known little about how complementary single strands of DNA court one another before binding to form the classical double helix. But now, molecular dynamics simulations have...
Jan, 01, 2010
OpenMM provides a common interface for doing MD simulations on GPUs
Over the last three years, the lab of Vijay Pande, PhD, at Stanford University has optimized their molecular dynamics (MD) algorithms to take advantage of the fast computing that’s possible...
Jul, 01, 2008
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
They've gone from hype to backlash. Now it's time for reality: How microarrays are being used to benefit healthcare
When DNA microarray technology emerged more than a decade ago, it was met with unbridled enthusiasm. By allowing scientists to look at the expression of enormous numbers of genes in the genome...
Oct, 01, 2006
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
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
As barriers to massive imaging collections fall, researchers can look at human systems in their entirety rather than in pieces
In the beginning there was the Visible Human. It broke new ground by gathering some 2,000 serial images from a death row inmate’s cadaver, and was the first time researchers had sectioned a...
Jul, 01, 2007
How cell-centered models are adding fundamental insights into our understanding of cell behaviors
The cell is like our financial system: Even if you have a diagram of all the complex interactions going on, you still cannot intuit how the whole system will react when perturbed. Indeed, the cell...
Apr, 01, 2010
The first four National Centers for Biomedical Computing take off
WHY NATIONAL CENTERS?
Four National Centers for Biomedical Computing were launched by the NIH in 2004 with $20 million in funding for each center over five years. The reason: We need to make...
Jun, 01, 2005
Exploring the current state of connectomics--in the midst of hype
Connectomics is having a moment. Following on the heels of genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and microbiomics, the latest “omic” to seize the spotlight is generating...
Jun, 20, 2013