Computational biology at TACC

TACC is reporting on work being done on its system related to computational biology and understanding how the molecules that advanced laboratory techniques have identified

“The largest unsolved problem in the computational biology of proteins is how to take a protein sequence and accurately predict the three-dimensional structure it folds into,” said Nick Grishin, professor of biophysics at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. “These structures are functional as three-dimensional bodies — they bind some molecules, they catalyze reactions — and knowing that structure is extremely important for the functional understanding of proteins.”

Grishin is pursuing this “unsolved problem” of protein structure prediction using Ranger— one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers — at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). His computations have led to new insights on protein activity, potential disease cures, and a deeper understanding of how humans evolved into such complex creatures.

Link courtesy HPCwire.