The structure of RNA is an important key to its function—including its role in disease. However, the structure of most RNAs is unknown because their extreme flexibility and high charge...
Mar, 01, 2009
Postdocs get a glance at the entire field and their first inside view of NIH grant-making
If he were a graduate student now, Francis Collins would be studying computational biology. That’s what the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) told a rapt audience at the...
Feb, 19, 2013
Getting the molecular dynamics car out of the garage
For those who are not practitioners of dynamical simulation methods, such as molecular dynamics (MD), one of the biggest misconceptions relates to time. Specifically, the mismatch between the...
Jun, 19, 2013
Decades of steady progress in pharmacogenetics have unearthed hundreds of associations between genes and drug response. But the field has to solve some theoretical and practical issues before it can deliver on the promise of personalized drug therapy.
As algorithms go, it’s deceptively simple. Just add together eight weighted pieces of patient information—age, height, weight, race, data about two genes, and a pair of clinical...
Jul, 01, 2009
The study of HIV evolution is not only critical to fighting the virus; it has also driven advances in the computational tools used to study evolution in general.
When Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, it would be decades before HIV would jump from monkeys to humans and set off a devastating worldwide pandemic. But evolution is at the heart of...
Jul, 01, 2009
Public databases impact not only how research is done but what kind of research is done in the first place.
The setting: a scientific conference in January 2008. The speaker, Bruce Ponder, MD, PhD, an oncology professor at Cambridge University, is describing a previously unknown link between a particular...
Oct, 01, 2008
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
It’s impossible to predict what the hottest new tools will be, but here are a few gems that caught our attention
Many experimental researchers rely on computational tools to push the pace and productivity of laboratory research. It’s impossible to predict what the hottest new tools will be, but this...
Apr, 01, 2011
Modelers are using recent gains in computational power to consider the complex interactions of hundreds or thousands of macromolecules at once--a necessary first step toward whole cell simulation
Molecules in cells behave like people in crowded subway cars. Because they can barely budge or stretch out without bumping into a neighbor, they move more slowly, smush themselves into more compact...
Apr, 01, 2011
The Salivary Proteome Knowledge Base
If spit could talk, it might tell us whether we’re sick or healthy.
According to David Wong, DMD, DMSc—professor and associate dean of research at the School of Dentistry at the...
Jun, 01, 2005