HAP-SAMPLE takes real data as the template for simulations
Trying to find the genetic causes of a human disease requires lots of data. These days, researchers scan the genomes of people who do and don’t have a particular disease and look for genome-...
Jan, 01, 2008
The importance of developing and deploying tools for the quantitative clinician scientist
The word Om (or Aum) has many meanings in ancient Hindu philosophy, one of which is “that which contains all other sounds.” The meaning has relevance to the now commonly used suffix...
Jun, 01, 2010
How increased coverage of the structure space is transforming the field of biology
When the human genome was completely sequenced in 2003, researchers were already pondering how biomedicine could make use of it. One hope was that the sequences would lead to a greater...
Jan, 01, 2010
Watching changes over time
These days, molecular biologists often gather data over a period of time—observing shifts as they occur inside groups of cells undergoing natural changes. The researchers then face the daunting...
Jun, 01, 2010
Bioinformatics and computational biology have told us a lot about biology—primarily that we know so little. Advances have led to many more unanswered questions, suggesting we know less and less...
Oct, 01, 2007
The flu virus is an evolutionary marvel. Teams of experts design an appropriate flu vaccine annually just to keep up with the microbe’s ability to evade the human immune system. Multiple...
Jul, 01, 2006
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
How errors in data, software, and methodology can teach us how to do better
In 2006, a paper in Nature Medicine suggested a novel and potentially revolutionary method for predicting patient responses to cancer therapies using gene signatures. The finding piqued the interest...
Sep, 01, 2011
Several big-dollar initiatives received NIH funding in late 2010
In the current economic climate, every research dollar counts. Fortunately, when it comes to biomedical computing, not everyone has been left counting change. Several big-dollar initiatives received...
Apr, 01, 2011
The National Institutes of Health Roadmap for Medical Research has recently completed the first stage of an ambitious program to expand the computational infrastructure and software tools needed to...
Jan, 01, 2006