Are digital libraries cold and inaccessible? In this Review, Hull, Pettifer & Kell discuss the current chilly state of digital libraries for the computational biologist and then examine a range of new applications that exploit the Web to create resources that are considerably more useful and sociable.
In our latest Tutorial, Marco Punta and Yanay Ofran provide an essential guide for biologists and computational biologists considering which type of computational tool is appropriate for the analysis of their protein of interest, and what kind of insights into its function these tools can provide.
In a new addition to our Education Section, Ben-Hur et al. discuss the use of support vector machines and related kernel methods in realizing the full potential of large datasets. They employ a running example of splice site recognition to illustrate different properties of SVMs using different kernels.
Auer et al. provide a description of a sequence-indepedent mechanism for the formation of oligomeric aggregates, showing that the growth of ordered structures from initially disordered assemblies is a consequence of the interplay between hydrophobicity and hydrogen bonding.
Yamashita and Tani show that functional hierarchy in the brain is linked to two distinct neuron groups, each with its own relative timescale. Their model, tested with a humanoid robot, suggests that timescales of neural activity act as important mechanisms for functional hierarchy in neural systems.
Stoma et al. use a computational approach to test the canalization hypothesis of auxin transport, whereby every cell senses and attempts to stabilize existing hormone fluxes. They show that this mechanism is able to generate patterns consistent with biological data describing meristem development.
PLoS Computational Biology is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal featuring works of exceptional significance that further our understanding of living systems at all scales through the application of computational methods. It is the official journal of the International Society for Computational Biology.
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