How precise an image can fluorescence microscopy provide?
As modern optics and cell biology have flourished in recent years, they’ve each driven innovation in the other. Yet commonly employed imaging techniques, such as fluorescence microscopy, have...
Sep, 01, 2011
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
A virtual metabolic network represents intracellular traffic
It’s hard to imagine a map depicting the daily flow of traffic on water, wheels and foot throughout San Diego—or any large city—over the course of a day. “That map can...
Apr, 01, 2007
A virtual lab rat; simulated DNA; an artificial pancreas; & integrating mental health data
Several biomedical computing projects received multi-million dollar funding in the fall of 2011, including efforts to: simulate the cardiac physiology of the rat; build a state-of-the-art DNA...
Jan, 02, 2012
How social media sites are rapidly doing unique research on large cohorts
It has become commonplace for people to use social media to share their healthcare stories, seek a community of individuals with the same diseases, and learn about treatment options. All this...
Jan, 02, 2012
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
The complexity and variability of aging itself, along with the fragmented nature of researchers’ current understanding of aging, call for tools that can help scientists dig through mounds of data to find often subtle connections.
Jeanne Louise Calment of Arles, France rode a bicycle until she was 100 years old. When she gave up smoking at age 117, her doctor suspected it was out of pride. (She couldn’t see well enough...
Apr, 01, 2008
Current methods of tracking the flu all come with a bit of a time lag—which is unfortunate when trying to monitor for potential pandemics like today’s swine flu crisis. There is a faster...
Jul, 01, 2009
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
AgentCell is the first simulation program to model a biochemical network at the molecular, single cell, and population levels simultaneously.
When a bacterium swims toward food, it follows a chaotic path, alternating between spinning randomly and driving forward, or ‘tumbling’ and ‘running.’ Computer scientists at...
Sep, 01, 2005