Watching the beginning of the infection process in the longest and biggest virus simulation to date.
After a satellite tobacco necrosis virus particle infects a cell, it sheds the calcium ions that hold the capsid proteins together. Next, the proteins start to repel each other, the capsid swells and...
Jun, 06, 2012
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
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
Exploring the current state of connectomics--in the midst of hype
Connectomics is having a moment. Following on the heels of genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and microbiomics, the latest “omic” to seize the spotlight is generating...
Jun, 20, 2013
Janelia farmers pursue novel, cross-disciplinary collaborations to work on long-term, unwieldy scientific problems difficult to tackle in a single laboratory
The folks at Howard Hughes Medical Institute who dreamed up Janelia Farm say it is as much a social innovation as a scientific one. “We are creating a different culture here,” says Gerald...
Jul, 01, 2006
POINT/
NO: Grant applications for the development and maintenance of software and infrastructure should compete with basic research applications.
Biomedicine has a strong...
Jul, 01, 2009
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
The Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) would encompass all the knowledge we’ve gathered, from genetic interactions to systems biology, into one integrated digital package
Science and medicine have fractured the human body into pieces: the cardiovascular system, the immune system, the endocrine system. Now a European initiative seeks to put the jigsaw puzzle back...
Jan, 01, 2008
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
The new Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) program signals NIH's faith in computational research
In December, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) approved a new trans-NIH initiative called Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K). With this action, the NIH signals its intention to invest a significant...
Feb, 19, 2013