The study of HIV evolution is not only critical to fighting the virus; it has also driven advances in the computational tools used to study evolution in general.
When Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, it would be decades before HIV would jump from monkeys to humans and set off a devastating worldwide pandemic. But evolution is at the heart of...
Jul, 01, 2009
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
Many a successful investigator working at the interface between molecular biology, genetics and computation will recognize the imperative to obtain biological validation for computational...
Jul, 01, 2008
Central repository of information on genes and proteins requires participation by the scientific community
If you build it, will they come? That’s the question on everyone’s mind after the launch of two pioneering initiatives in community annotation: WikiProteins and Gene Wiki, announced,...
Oct, 01, 2008
Making reproducible research accessible to people who don’t write code
A particular mashup of data and tools produces the unique results found in each computational biology publication. Now, researchers have developed a model system that gives readers—especially...
Apr, 01, 2010
CompuCell-3D models behaviors rather than genes
Researchers have successfully simulated how growing blood vessels affect the sizes and shapes of tumors using a 3-D model based solely on how cells behave—without reference to intracellular...
Jan, 01, 2010
Biomarker research, genetics, and imaging are all coming into play
In 1906, at a small medical meeting in Tübingen, Germany, physician Alois Alzheimer gave a now-famous presentation about a puzzling patient. At age 51, Auguste D.’s memory was failing...
Oct, 01, 2007
For patients suffering from nerve damage, neural regeneration is a faint hope. It rarely happens naturally, and attempts to coax new growth often fail. Researchers are trying to develop scaffolds to...
Apr, 01, 2009
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
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