Science, Vol 265, Issue 5174, 902-908
Copyright © 1994 by American Association for the Advancement of Science
Parallel computing in biomedical research
RL Martino,
CA Johnson,
EB Suh,
BL Trus,
and
TK Yap
Computational Bioscience and Engineering Laboratory, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892.
Scalable parallel computer architectures provide the computational performance needed for advanced biomedical computing problems. The National Institutes of Health have developed a number of parallel algorithms and techniques useful in determining biological structure and function. These applications include processing electron micrographs to determine the three-dimensional structure of viruses, calculating the solvent-accessible surface area of proteins to help predict the three-dimensional conformation of these molecules from their primary structures, and searching for homologous DNA or amino acid sequences in large biological databases. Timing results demonstrate substantial performance improvements with parallel implementations compared with conventional sequential systems.
