Computer modeling may help narrow the molecular landscape to the best drug prospects
Every pharmaceutical company wants to find the next blockbuster drug. Yet finding molecules with a complete set of desired properties is tricky because of the astronomical number of medium-sized...
Jul, 01, 2006
2-D computer simulation reveals unexpected pathway
What goes into the stomach must come out, but perhaps not in the same order in which it entered, as gastroenterologists have long assumed. A two-dimensional computer model of human stomach digestion...
Jan, 01, 2007
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
How Tat crosses the lipid bilayer--with help from the bilayer.
A powerful snippet of protein called the Tat peptide ferries itself across cell membranes dragging just about anything it’s attached to along with it. How it accomplishes this feat has been a...
Jul, 01, 2008
T-Rex in the Slow Lane
by Kristen Cobb
Tyrannosaurus rex is often pictured baring its teeth, crouching, and running swiftly after its prey, but these images are largely based on human fancy...
Jan, 01, 2006
New computational model simulates how particles in the air get deposited in the lungs during breathing
Depending on their nature, microscopic particles suspended in air—called aerosols—...
Apr, 01, 2009
The Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) would encompass all the knowledge we’ve gathered, from genetic interactions to systems biology, into one integrated digital package
Science and medicine have fractured the human body into pieces: the cardiovascular system, the immune system, the endocrine system. Now a European initiative seeks to put the jigsaw puzzle back...
Jan, 01, 2008
For a century, neuroscientists have dissected, traced, eavesdropped on, and are now compiling a seemingly endless cast of players in the nervous system. As we keep gathering more and more molecular...
Apr, 01, 2009
Can the complexities of biology be boiled down to Amazon.com-style recommendations? The examples here suggest possible pathways to an intelligent healthcare system with big data at its core.
“We have recommendations for you,” announces the website Amazon.com each time a customer signs in.
This mega-retailer analyzes billions of customers’ purchases—nearly $...
Jan, 02, 2012
Supercomputers open up new horizons, offering the possibility of discovering new ways to understand life’s complexity
Their very names sound like dinosaurs. Teracomputers. Petacomputers. These are, in fact, the dinosaurs of the digital world—monstrous, hungry and powerful. But unlike the extinct...
Oct, 01, 2006