To understand biology—and provide appropriate medical care—scientists need to understand interactions across multiple scales. Hence the Physiome.
This is the reality of human biology: events span a 109 range in lengthscale (molecular to organismal) and a 1014 range in timescale (molecular movement to years). To understand this biology—...
Jun, 01, 2010
Simulations can teach us how young bodies and faces develop; how an artery compensates for decades of fatty plaque deposits by growing and thickening its walls; how tissue engineers can best coax endothelial cells to develop into organized sheets of skin for burn patients; and how cancerous tumors invade neighboring tissue.
For better or for worse, and on many levels, our tissues never stop growing and changing. While developing from childhood to old age, we grow not only bone, cartilage, fat, muscle and skin, but also...
Apr, 01, 2008
Advances in visualization changing work flows for understanding molecular dynamics, tracking cell movements, and designing interventional procedures
The pathway from raw data to valuable visualization of molecules, cells or organs being simulated over time involves several potentially painstaking steps. Typically, researchers must generate a set...
Sep, 02, 2011
Looking inside the cell without opening it
When light hits an obstacle, its scattering pattern reveals information regarding the internal structure of the obstacle. If that obstacle is a cell, the scattering pattern might indicate whether the...
Jun, 01, 2005
2-D simulation shows angiogenesis as it happens
Microscopic capillaries grow on demand, snaking toward hungry cells needing their blood supply. Understanding how to control this process could help scientists promote wound healing or halt cancer in...
Jan, 01, 2007
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
Today, the knowledge, experience and memory of clinicians or scientists function as the exclusive resource for distinguishing normal from abnormal brain images; identifying signatures or biomarkers...
Jul, 01, 2009
Computer reconstruction of electron microscope images reveals surprising bends in viral DNA.
The phi29 bacteriophage is an efficient infection machine—it fires its genome into a host bacterium, hijacks the host’s cellular equipment, and assembles an army of new viruses for its...
Oct, 01, 2008
No two cancer patients respond identically to treatment. Some will be cured while others will see their cancer return, and physicians are at a loss to explain why. Now, using MRI imaging researchers...
Oct, 01, 2009
By computationally combining incomplete imaging information with bits and pieces of structural data from all sorts of different experiments, researchers have worked out the protein-by-protein structure of an important cellular assembly called the nuclear pore complex.
Like puzzles? Here’s a tough one: Try figuring out the construction of a nearly 500-piece machine without blueprints or a complete picture. Biologists have now accomplished just such a feat,...
Apr, 01, 2008