The edict that academics must “publish or perish” serves not merely to advance careers, but also to stress the importance of transmitting knowledge from scientist to scientist and...
Jan, 01, 2006
What this magazine has covered so far.
This, the sixth issue of this magazine (and the final issue of Volume 2), provides a good opportunity for reflection on where we’ve been and where we’re headed. Three years ago, the...
Jul, 01, 2006
Using computation, researchers narrow the search space for directed evolution; guide mutagenesis; and create de novo enzymes
Enzymes are among nature’s crowning achievements: they accelerate chemical reactions, making life possible. People have co-opted natural enzymes for industrial use for thousands of years (think...
Feb, 19, 2013
Now, with just a few mouse clicks, anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can create graphic images of RNA molecules (using ToRNADo) or generate the ion environments that surround these...
Jan, 01, 2007
iHOP organizes interconnected information
Text-mining tools such as iHOP (Information Hyperlinked Over Proteins) are doing for biological literature what hyperlinks and search engines do for the Internet: organizing interconnected...
Apr, 01, 2007
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
Public databases impact not only how research is done but what kind of research is done in the first place.
The setting: a scientific conference in January 2008. The speaker, Bruce Ponder, MD, PhD, an oncology professor at Cambridge University, is describing a previously unknown link between a particular...
Oct, 01, 2008
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
Researchers are expanding the types of data that can be used to predict infectious disease spread; developing novel ways to analyze that data; and trying to create systems that can help address public health problems today
American officials are seeking better ways to anticipate public health crises following ten years that have seen outbreaks of SARS, avian flu, H1N1, West Nile virus, cholera and, most recently,...
Apr, 01, 2011
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