Still unknown: Whether they can get inside cells
Recent research illustrates a nightmare scenario for nanotechnology: simulated particles called buckyballs eagerly glomming onto nearby DNA. The study, published in Biophysical Journal in December...
Apr, 01, 2006
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
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
In a classic cartoon, a physician offers a second opinion from his computer. The patient looks horrified: How absurd to think that a computer could have better judgment than a human doctor! But...
Jan, 01, 2010
A combination of genomics data and molecular dynamics modeling is sufficient to predict protein complex structure
The zone where two proteins interact presents a possible target for drug design. But identifying possible drugs requires a detailed understanding of the interface between the proteins. Computer...
Apr, 01, 2010
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
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
As leaders and participants of an effort to build an infrastructure that enables biomedical computing on a broad basis, it is incumbent upon us to define clear and challenging goals that will dazzle the world
The world changed when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in 1969. Humans could survive outside the earth’s atmosphere! Science and engineering could achieve great things! And the nerds at the...
Jan, 01, 2008
iHOP organizes interconnected information
Text-mining tools such as iHOP (Information Hyperlinked Over Proteins) are doing for biological literature what hyperlinks and search engines do for the Internet: organizing interconnected...
Apr, 01, 2007
There is growing recognition that epigenetics may be just as important as genetics in human health and disease.
In the early 19th century, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck explained evolution as the inheritance of acquired traits; he believed that changes due to behaviors and exposures in one generation could be passed...
Jun, 01, 2010