The bright future of computational biology

I have been looking into computational biology for some time, in particular, the molecular dynamics part. One sure application is the drug design. Successful cases have been reported (see J. Andrew McCammon's papers). That's probably also the reason why D.E. Shaw is so devoted into this.

What happens behind the scene is that computational biology has totally changed the way of drug discovery/design. From traditional target drug test, we has made the drug business a search, like Google did for Internet, in plain words, 筛沙. With this change, we are able to make use of all computational resources on this planet and fundamentally accelerate the process.

If we think a little bit wider, we may see the application goes far beyond drug business. Any traditional business may have its own chance to be reshaped. For example, in wine business, both oenology and viticulture can be revisited. Of course, further homework needs to be done to see whether such changes make perfect sense, both technically and economically.

What I say here may not go real overnight, but in 5-10 years time, we have a great chance to see the explosion of such revolutions. Like what Monsanto did to what we eat, finally, we, human being, will be nothing but a combination of naked numbers.