I remembered that once I have a talk with Yahui, who asked what the computer and Information technology are doing in bio-science. Actually computer is really used a lot in bio-science, for example in bioinformatics, They are used to:

•  Analyze gene / protein sequences
• Use all types of databases for gene, DNA, protein, pathways etc
• Deal with DNA and protein sequences
• Conduct similarity searches for sequences
• Build a multiple sequence alignment
• Visualize protein 3-D structures
• Construct phylogenetic trees based on various genetic distances

Even now it is mainly to do these gene analysis in the research field. Because it is still very
expensive to sequence one individual's genome. Using current technology, it will cost you $30 billion to sequence an individual's genome. However, there are some enthusiasm scientists, who are dedicating themselves to develop some cheaper, high-through put technologies (see the link at the end). Also there are several trends which I observed:

1) It will be gradually more and more cheap and easy to check people's genes (at least several important ones, not all of them) for some disease, such as Cancer, HIV, or other gene-related disease.

Checking one gene is only about $50, it will become cheaper in the coming decades.

2) Some medical experts have already suggested that some patients have to be checked their genes before doctor's subscription of drugs.

For example, it is better for the HIV patients to check their certain genes for drug resistance before using any anti-HIV drugs.

3) This gene analysis and visualization have already out of the training of an ordinary doctor. We will see an industry growing to carter for this need. Either software or hardware to help doctors to analysis these medical or biological data.

The following Nature article introduced one of such technology of sequencing an individual's genome:

Source: www.nature.com

Profile: Meet Exhibit I

George Church has made a name for himself as an 'information
exhibitionist'. Erika Check Hayden explores how the technological sage
is turning his gaze to the next horizon - you.

Erika Check Hayden
S. OGDEN

One day in the 1980s, while a graduate student at Harvard University,
George Church decided to change the way he saw the world. He started
with simple tools — scissors, cardboard, and sticky tape — and he
ended up working at his bench with a pair of homemade blinkers affixed
to his temples. Asked about the nearly forgotten episode, an older,
wiser, now-tenured Church chuckles at his younger self, but he still
defends the stunt's essential point. “I was making a statement,” he
says, taking a break from running one of the largest, most eclectic
biology labs in the United States. “Sometimes scientists put on
blinders and don't see the big picture.”

Performance art's loss was science's gain, but Church has never lost
sight of the point he was trying to make that day — indeed, he has
spent his career scanning the horizon for the new, the different and
the maybe-just-possible. As biology has become ever more specialized,
Church has continued to widen the scope of his work. Yet he brings to
each new project a depth and intensity of vision that suggests he
knows when to put the blinkers on as well as when to take them off.

    “Sometimes scientists put on blinders and don't see the big
picture.”

George Church

Church spends most of his time dreaming up far-fetched ideas and
doggedly pursuing them. His thoughts on DNA sequencing, first
formulated decades ago, led to some of the high-output sequencing
techniques now revolutionizing biology. His inquiries have led him to
jointly found Codon Devices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the
first synthetic-biology firms. He has also founded two other
companies, LS9 near San Francisco, California, which makes biofuels,
and Knome in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which sells personal-genome
sequencing services.

More details can be found:
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080213/full/451763a.html

 

analysize medical or biological data.


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