First-Ever Supercomputer Sim of the H1N1 Virus Gives Researchers Resolution Down to the Atom
H1N1 CDCA different sort of computer virus gives drug developers new weaponry Back in 2009 when the H1N1 pandemic was sweeping the globe--it would leave about 17,000 people dead by the beginning of 2010, with confirmed cases in more than 200 countries--waves of anxiety followed in its wake. For most, it was a fear of an illness that seemed at the time indiscriminate, unstoppable, and incurable. For the virologists and drug developers trying to battle the virus, it stemmed from the fact that H1N1 was so poorly understood. This new strain of influenza A was a hybrid borrowing genetic elements from a handful of flu viruses, and researchers weren't just without tools--they didn't even know for sure what tools might be useful. Fast-forward to late last week when a team of researchers at the Institute of Process Engineering of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS-IPE) generated the first computational model of...