To collect the data, a normal human brain was encased in a block of paraffin. Successive thin layers were shaved off the block, and the top of the block was photographed after each pass. The resulting movie frames were hand-digitized to produce approximately 100 contours spaced 1.1 mm apart. Distinct neuroanatomical structures were digitized separately, so that they could be colored and displayed individually. Images were produced by SDSC staff programmer Phil Mercurio using the Wavefront animation package.
Biologists work very close to the frontier between bewilderment and understanding.
After a few years waiting in the wings, while computational physics and chemistry were taking their bows, computational biology has emerged as one of the new superstars on the SDSC research stage. Recently awarded a major grant from the NSF Biological Sciences Directorate, SDSC's computational biology effort includes a variety of activities, many already underway and many more planned. This article introduces you to some of SDSC's current and planned involvement in these exciting research areas. Their work, which was the cover story of Science last July, was the first determination of the three- dimensional structure of a protein kinase. It is believed that understanding this structure will lead to a better understanding of the kinase family.