Modeling Biomolecules: Larger Scales, Longer Durations

In the 1960's, researchers studied condensed systems of several hundred atoms, modeled biomolecules with hundreds of atoms in the 1970's, and simulated biopolymers with several thousand atoms in the 1980's. Each increase in scale opened up qualitatively new computational research areas. Combining networks of workstations and efficient parallel algorithms now could model, in the 1990's, biopolymer systems on a large scale and for long times. This will open new avenues for research in molecular biomedicine, namely, the study of interactions among large biopolymers such as proteins and DNA. The new research will contribute to the understanding of the molecular architecture and control of biological cells, and of disease and its prevention, to a much greater extent than ever before.