Many a successful investigator working at the interface between molecular biology, genetics and computation will recognize the imperative to obtain biological validation for computational...
Jul, 01, 2008
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
Using natural language processing to find necessary samples
To discover links between genes and disease, researchers typically recruit individual patients with and without the disease of interest; have them sign consent forms; take their medical histories;...
Jan, 01, 2010
How can they help us understand proteins?
Graphs, or networks, have been widely adopted in computational biology, with examples including protein-protein interaction networks, gene regulatory networks, and residue interaction networks in...
Jun, 20, 2013
They've gone from hype to backlash. Now it's time for reality: How microarrays are being used to benefit healthcare
When DNA microarray technology emerged more than a decade ago, it was met with unbridled enthusiasm. By allowing scientists to look at the expression of enormous numbers of genes in the genome...
Oct, 01, 2006
Early evidence suggests a mixed picture
Stanford University’s 2004-2005 computer science T-shirts exhibited symbols for six men and one woman -- an accurate portrayal of the ratio in the department and only slightly worse than the...
Apr, 01, 2006
How errors in data, software, and methodology can teach us how to do better
In 2006, a paper in Nature Medicine suggested a novel and potentially revolutionary method for predicting patient responses to cancer therapies using gene signatures. The finding piqued the interest...
Sep, 01, 2011
An exploration of data-driven and process-driven approaches to data privacy
Trust. It’s the basis of every patient/physician interaction: Shared personal health information is kept confidential and used only for the patient’s benefit. It’s a tradition that...
Jan, 02, 2012
The importance of developing and deploying tools for the quantitative clinician scientist
The word Om (or Aum) has many meanings in ancient Hindu philosophy, one of which is “that which contains all other sounds.” The meaning has relevance to the now commonly used suffix...
Jun, 01, 2010
As barriers to massive imaging collections fall, researchers can look at human systems in their entirety rather than in pieces
In the beginning there was the Visible Human. It broke new ground by gathering some 2,000 serial images from a death row inmate’s cadaver, and was the first time researchers had sectioned a...
Jul, 01, 2007