Choices and challenges | Nature


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Access through your institution Buy or subscribe Computers have changed biology forever, even if most biologists don't yet realize it, says Michael Levitt, a structural biologist at


Stanford University and the founder of Molecular Applications Group (MAG), in Palo Alto, California. Already, drug discovery is driven by the need to apply powerful computers to voluminous


data sets, and the trend, he says, is certain to extend into all other disciplines in biology. Chris Lee, Levitt's former graduate student and co-founder of MAG, agrees, noting that


most biologists today use computers only in the most elementary way as a typewriter and graph-paper substitute. “Bioinformatics is really going to surge when biologists realize that


there's a lot of value, and a lot of new insights, in being able to work across large amounts of data that they and all the other scientists in the world have produced,” says Lee. This


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Wickware is a science writer in Oakland, California, USA Potter Wickware Authors * Potter Wickware View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar RIGHTS


AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Wickware, P. Choices and challenges. _Nature_ 389, 420 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/38806 Download citation


* Issue Date: 25 September 1997 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/38806 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Get shareable link Sorry,


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