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{bio,medical} informatics

Tuesday, August 21, 2001

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The Scientist NCI, Cray Blaze Through Genome Map
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"Cray's Conway says that typical bioinformatics algorithms approach problems, such as STR mapping, using statistical sampling rather than exhaustive, methods. In a statistical sampling approach, relatively large regions are examined in aggregate to produce a score. If this value is above some threshold value, then the region is examined in greater detail. If not, it is discarded. In contrast, exhaustive approaches examine each residue, one at a time. The disadvantage of statistical approaches is that important elements can be missed if they are in a region that fails to produce an adequate score. Although exhaustive approaches do not suffer from this drawback, they are usually computationally prohibitive. Nevertheless, according to Conway, initial benchmark comparisons of the SV1 to the ABCC's other supercomputers showed that, when using software written to take advantage of the computer's pattern-matching capabilities, the Cray was up to 2,000 times faster than otherwise comparable computers. Thus, a problem that ordinarily took days could be finished in minutes."

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“Bioinformatics will be at the core of biology in the 21st century. In fields ranging from structural biology to genomics to biomedical imaging, ready access to data and analytical tools are fundamentally changing the way investigators in the life sciences conduct research and approach problems. Complex, computationally intensive biological problems are now being addressed and promise to significantly advance our understanding of biology and medicine. No biological discipline will be unaffected by these technological breakthroughs.”

BIOINFORMATICS IN THE 21st CENTURY

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