The role of high performance parallel computing in biological research [molecular structure application]

Scalable parallel computer architectures provide the computational performance demanded by advanced biological computing problems. NIH has 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 predict the three-dimensional conformation of these molecules from their primary structure, and searching for homologous DNA sequences in large genetic databases. Timing results demonstrate substantial performance improvements with parallel implementations compared with conventional sequential systems.