Medical Students
Biomedical Engineering
Sites in Education
Computational Biology
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Simulation of influenza virus entry. Molecular dynamics simulation is used to model the interaction of viral coat proteins with the target cell membrane at high resolution. Models from simulation are then compared to experimental data. UVa researchers are using both computational and experimental techniques together to analyze the mechanism of viral entry in much greater detail than directly accessible via experiment. |
Computational biology is the use of mathematical and computational techniques to analyze, explain, and predict biological systems.
The past years have brought a dramatic increase in the amount of experimental data generated by high-throughput sequencing, proteomics, metabolic and gene expression profiling, and structural techniques. Simultaneously, the computational power we have available has continued to increase exponentially.
We thus have both many more data at our disposal and the ability to make increasingly sophisticated analyses.
Cutting-edge research at UVa includes computational biophysics, genomics, computational structural biology, and computational systems biology. We seek both to understand fundamental biological questions and diseases of particular medical relevance, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, lung infections in cystic fibrosis, drug-resistant bacterial infections, and influenza.
In addition to analyzing biological systems, many laboratories at UVa combine computational and experimental work, using sophisticated tools to analyze biomolecular behavior and then verify predictions in the lab.
