Supercomputing in molecular biology: applications to sequence analysis

Abstract
Genetic data, accumulating at a rapid pace, are ideally suited to computer analysis. These data pose problems of a magnitude that requires supercomputing. The National Cancer Institute of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has developed the Advanced Scientific Computing Laboratory to utilize these data for basic research of relevance to cancer and other diseases. The facility and its use for several research problems of biomedical importance are discussed below. The problems considered are sequence comparisons, nucleic acid second structure prediction, Monte Carlo tests, molecular dynamics, and drug design. Computer time in spent various areas of research is summarized.