How researchers are combining disparate data types and simulating systems that contain many different moving parts
13 years ago Markus Covert, PhD, read a New York Times article that changed his life. The article quoted a prominent microbiologist who suggested that the ultimate test of one’s...
Feb, 16, 2013
Using computational models, researchers are gaining traction toward understanding what makes a stem cell a stem cell; how gene expression drives stem cell differentiation; why studying stem cell heterogeneity is important; and, ultimately, how stem cells control their fate.
To the casual observer, stem cells offer the almost magical promise of—Voila!—turning into exactly the kind of cell needed to repair an injured spinal cord or replace a damaged organ. And...
Apr, 01, 2010
The National Institutes of Health are on a mission: To understand and tackle the problems of human health. To make that daunting problem approachable, 15 of the 20 institutes divvy up human health...
Oct, 05, 2012
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
While science educators actively debate the relative merits of teaching natural science in an integrated fashion, some authors are writing texts that will make it happen. Philip Nelson’s book,...
Jun, 01, 2005
When you step on the gas pedal, you expect acceleration (and lots of it). Stomp on the brake to come safely to a stop in the rain. Finger the power-assisted steering wheel and the car obeys. Make a...
Oct, 01, 2009
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
Plot shows how functional communities in yeast protein interaction networks change in size and nature at different levels of resolution
Splashes of bold color seem to drip down the page, bringing to mind the paintings of Jackson Pollock. Spurred by the beauty of the image she had created, Anna Lewis,* a graduate student studying...
Apr, 01, 2011
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
AgentCell is the first simulation program to model a biochemical network at the molecular, single cell, and population levels simultaneously.
When a bacterium swims toward food, it follows a chaotic path, alternating between spinning randomly and driving forward, or ‘tumbling’ and ‘running.’ Computer scientists at...
Sep, 01, 2005