Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The most numerically intensive application of computers to bioinformatics is in predicting protein
structure, especially when the modeling process begins with first principles—so-called
ab initio
modeling. Once a protein has been modeled, any number of online or desktop applications can be
used to visualize the structures in three dimensions. Although affordable workstations can handle
most visualization needs, modeling protein structure and interactions often requires distributed
computer systems or supercomputers.
It's important to note that many of the numerical techniques used in bioinformatics provide
an
answer, but not necessarily
the
answer to data analysis, classification, and prediction problems. For
example, a neural network can be trained to predict the location of exons on a segment of DNA, but
the answer is never a certainty until it is verified experimentally. Similarly, numerical methods can be
used to predict the structure of proteins, but the accuracy of the prediction varies significantly,
depending on the methods used and the problem set. The challenge is identifying the methodology
that provides adequate results with the time and computer resources available.
Communications
As a communications system, the computer is like an asynchronous communications medium,
typified by server-based e-mail. Data are deposited in the system and retrieved later. As in an e-mail
system, the information can be retrieved by the person who originally created it, or more often by
another party. Similarly, biological database systems can be private or public, where the former is
intended to provide asynchronous communications to the same user, and the latter approximates
sending mail to others.
From a data-management perspective, computers are increasingly used as
asynchronous
communications devices. That is, unlike a telephone or other synchronous communications device,
communications through computer networks don't necessarily occur in real-time and are independent
of any clock. Instead, communications are event driven. For example, in the normal operation of a
