Bioinformatics Term Project

DrLeopoldStrabismus

Hey folks!

Your friendly neighborhood Fillé Au Fish here. So, I need a term project topic for my bioinformatics class, and I come here as one possible source of information! Keep in mind I'm not limiting myself to this forum, but since I do frequent here, and I know it's full of smart and classy people - I ask.

For those of you who do not know what bioinformatics is, it is the use of information systems technologies (AKA computers, databases, the INTERNET EVEN) to solve biological problems. Because of the large amount of data associated with biological systems (DNA sequences, protein chains, etc.) computers become very important. They are a force-multiplier. They allow terrabytes of data to be searched for patterns millions of times faster than a human being could. One of the more famous bioinformatics endeavors was the Human Genome Project.

So for those of you who are able to help me - what are some current problems in the field of bioinformatics that my team could adopt as a term project?

If you don't know much about bioinformatics, then this thread could be a place to ask questions about it/discuss what tidbits you DO know.

deku12345

I believe there is that one search for alien life. The SETI project I think its called? Its something like that. They're using PS3's to process data I know.

Amoeba Boy

In the medical world there is currently a trend heading towards individually personalized medicine. Over the past few years sequencing a person's genome has become cheaper and cheaper, and with the rate the technology is advancing, it won't be long until any average middle class person could get their genome sequenced.

The ideal situation will be that eventually everyone's genome will be sequenced and kept in a massive database. When someone visits the doctor, he could prescribe them medicine based on any registered mutations (Ex. a mutation in ~15% of whites makes codeine ineffective. Instead of the doctor prescribing a painkiller with codeine, have the patient return saying it doesn't work, and get prescribed another drug, the doctor will look at the genome, see the mutation, and prescribe a working drug right off the bat).

The problems and debates come in the implementation of that ideal. Who should pay for the initial sequencing of the patient's genome? Should it be a personal responsibility or covered by health insurance? More importantly, should a patient's genome be considered by an insurance company? There are mutations that increase the risk for diseases, from health disease to Alzheimer's. Would it be moral or lawful for insurance to deny coverage to a patient based off the mutations found in their DNA?

I hope that all helps, I got kind of carried away. After reading all the different literature and economics threads I got excited to see something I could apply expertise to.

X'o'Lore

you need to flex your expertise more Amoeba. This is interesting stuff.

For my part, this sounds like the sort of business Folding @ Home is all about maybe? Distributed computing being used to do massive amounts of calculations for some sort of protein folding thing. They have recently developed GPU clients for this that use graphics cards to do computations. These are crunching numbers so fast it makes standard CPUs look bad, but they are more limited in the sort of calculation they can do I think. Still they are getting smarter. It has the potential to bring a LOT of computing power to people at a fairly low cost. I'm actually pretty curious to see what comes out of that.