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
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
Bringing models closer to reality
When the ill-fated space shuttle Columbia launched on January 16, 2003, a large piece of foam fell off and hit the left wing. Alerted of the impact, NASA engineers used a computer model to predict...
Oct, 19, 2012
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
Biomechanical models contribute to a better understanding of both the normal and the diseased eye.
Squint, and you can almost make out that bird soaring over the horizon. But determining whether it’s a hawk or a raven will be nearly impossible for someone with myopia, also known as...
Feb, 19, 2013
Moving from intuition to evidence-based intervention
To understand how muscles contract and joints flex, researchers have dissected cadavers and experimented with animals. They can describe how bones, muscles, and tendons connect in a complicated...
Jan, 01, 2007
Bioinformatics and computational biology enable microbiome research
This past June, 200 members of the NIH-funded Human Microbiome Project (HMP) Consortium published a slew of papers offering fresh insights into the role microbial communities play in the human body...
Oct, 22, 2012
Scientists have long wondered how many genes are necessary to support life. This knowledge could be used to construct new forms of artificial life to efficiently produce better biofuels or drugs....
Jan, 01, 2008
They're more than just pretty pictures adorning office walls and presentation slides. Beamed into operating room computer monitors, they're guiding the scalpels of brain surgeons. Dancing...
Jan, 01, 2012
The NCBCs legacy of human capital
In this issue of Biomedical Computation Review, we feature a look at the NIH Roadmap National Centers for Biomedical Computing (NCBC) program. The NCBC program was a response to the recommendations...
Oct, 19, 2012