Avner Friedman can explain how Bioinformatics is shaping the future of medicine.
Allison Snow speaks eloquently of the risks--and benefits--of genetically altered crops.
Lonnie Thompson says the ice cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro will be gone in 15 years-and he has the pictures and data to back up his claim.
So what do these three people have in common?
Well, besides being capable of above-average cocktail party chatter, they all work at the same place: OSU.
Go Bucks!
This time of year, most news about OSU focuses on the football field. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, especially this season.) Unfortunately, gridiron headlines leave little room for arguably more important, if less 'exciting' news from the Ohio State University's research centers.
More than 40 research centers thrive on the Columbus campus, with focuses varying from public policy to colon cancer. You can scout the university's web site devoted to research news at http://www.acs.ohio-state.edu/units/rese... .
(If you just want to research the words to Carmen Ohio so you can sing along at halftime, hit the University's home page at http://www.osu.edu/ )
Below, a brief introduction to Friedman, Snow, and Thompson and their respective fields of study.
Computing the Stuff of Life
We live in what scientists call the post-genomic era. That is, the Human Genome Project is wrapping up and we've got a pretty good "map" of the human genome. Now the question is, what do we do with all this data?
Bioinformatics is the answer.
Don't worry if this is the first time you've heard the word "bioinformatics." I didn't know what it was either, until I was assigned a 2,500-word article on the subject-and believe me, 2,500 words doesn't do the subject justice.(So bear with me as I try to condense it into about one-tenth that space!)
Bioinformatics is a relatively new term in computational biology, and it is quickly growing into a field of its own, almost as comprehensive as biology itself. Bioinformatics encompasses a range of 'in silica' sciences--that is, scientific work performed by computers.
Bioinformatics deals with the storage, retrieval and analysis of molecular sequence, structure, and functional information; involves genomics and proteomics (study of proteins), the design and optimization of algorithms for sequence structure alignment and analysis, as well as the development of machine learning and data mining algorithms. In other words, it's biology meets math meets computer science, to the Nth degree. The numbers, I'm told, rival those in the field of astrophysics (super collider, anyone?).
Although the field is established, we don't know quite what to call those who work in it. We've yet to coin the term 'bioinformatistician' or its like, but lacking a specific definition or title hasn't slowed its growth. OSU's new research center, the Mathematical Biosciences Institute (MBI), lead by Dr. Avner Friedman, professor of mathematics at Ohio State, opened in September. MBI takes a multidisciplinary approach to calculating the complexities of life itself.
Allison Snow speaks eloquently of the risks--and benefits--of genetically altered crops.
Lonnie Thompson says the ice cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro will be gone in 15 years-and he has the pictures and data to back up his claim.
So what do these three people have in common?
Well, besides being capable of above-average cocktail party chatter, they all work at the same place: OSU.
Go Bucks!
This time of year, most news about OSU focuses on the football field. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, especially this season.) Unfortunately, gridiron headlines leave little room for arguably more important, if less 'exciting' news from the Ohio State University's research centers.
More than 40 research centers thrive on the Columbus campus, with focuses varying from public policy to colon cancer. You can scout the university's web site devoted to research news at http://www.acs.ohio-state.edu/units/rese... .
(If you just want to research the words to Carmen Ohio so you can sing along at halftime, hit the University's home page at http://www.osu.edu/ )
Below, a brief introduction to Friedman, Snow, and Thompson and their respective fields of study.
Computing the Stuff of Life
We live in what scientists call the post-genomic era. That is, the Human Genome Project is wrapping up and we've got a pretty good "map" of the human genome. Now the question is, what do we do with all this data?
Bioinformatics is the answer.
Don't worry if this is the first time you've heard the word "bioinformatics." I didn't know what it was either, until I was assigned a 2,500-word article on the subject-and believe me, 2,500 words doesn't do the subject justice.(So bear with me as I try to condense it into about one-tenth that space!)
Bioinformatics is a relatively new term in computational biology, and it is quickly growing into a field of its own, almost as comprehensive as biology itself. Bioinformatics encompasses a range of 'in silica' sciences--that is, scientific work performed by computers.
Bioinformatics deals with the storage, retrieval and analysis of molecular sequence, structure, and functional information; involves genomics and proteomics (study of proteins), the design and optimization of algorithms for sequence structure alignment and analysis, as well as the development of machine learning and data mining algorithms. In other words, it's biology meets math meets computer science, to the Nth degree. The numbers, I'm told, rival those in the field of astrophysics (super collider, anyone?).
Although the field is established, we don't know quite what to call those who work in it. We've yet to coin the term 'bioinformatistician' or its like, but lacking a specific definition or title hasn't slowed its growth. OSU's new research center, the Mathematical Biosciences Institute (MBI), lead by Dr. Avner Friedman, professor of mathematics at Ohio State, opened in September. MBI takes a multidisciplinary approach to calculating the complexities of life itself.
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