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
Anton: A computer dedicated to molecular dynamics simulations.
In biology, many exciting events happen on the millisecond timescale—proteins fold, channels open and close, and enzymes act on their substrates. Atomic-level simulations of this duration are...
Oct, 01, 2008
Researchers are not simply retrieving and repackaging what is already known, but are also deriving new knowledge by discovering connections that were previously unnoticed.
Not long ago, reading biomedical literature involved hours in the library combing through rows of dusty periodicals—not to mention pocketfuls of change for the copy machine. Now, although the...
Jul, 01, 2008
One of our goals at Biomedical Computation Review is to create a sense of kinship among members of this very diverse community of researchers. This column provides reviews of some of the latest and...
Jun, 01, 2005
During the one-hour drama that is human cell division, many genes enter and exit the stage. Until now, researchers did not know the identities of many of these actors, nor understand their various...
Apr, 01, 2011
Computational simulations of life in motion at every scale—molecular, cellular, tissue-level, and whole organism—are boosting our understanding of the role mechanics plays in controlling life.
From atoms and molecules to insects, dinosaurs, and humans, computational researchers are finding that much of life can be understood in mechanical terms. Indeed, the machines of life are...
Jan, 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
A newly created molecular computer works in human cells and offers the flexibility of a general-purpose circuit. The advance, described in Nature Biotechnology in May, brings closer the eventual...
Oct, 01, 2007
Classifying variability of gene expression
Genetically identical cells or organisms grown in identical environments will differ phenotypically, because—even with a common script—gene expression is inherently variable, or noisy....
Apr, 01, 2006
The National Institutes of Health are on a mission: To understand and tackle the problems of human health. To make that daunting problem approachable, 15 of the 20 institutes divvy up human health...
Oct, 05, 2012