PLoS Computational Biology: A Peer-Reviewed Open-Access Journal

A Learning Theory for Reward-Modulated Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity with Application to Biofeedback
Nonidentifiability of the Source of Intrinsic Noise in Gene Expression From Single-Burst Data
Protein Docking by the Underestimation of Free Energy Funnels in the Space of Encounter Complexes
Analysis of Gene Regulatory Networks in the Mammalian Circadian Rhythm
Impact of Limited Solvent Capacity on Metabolic Rate, Enzyme Activities, and Metabolite Concentrations of S. cerevisiae Glycolysis
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Review

Structural biology by NMR: structure, dynamics, and interactions

In our latest review, Phineus Markwick, Thérèse Malliavin & Michael Nilges focus on NMR methods that both determine and assess biomolecular structure or dynamics in the most objective way, and discuss the challenges involved in obtaining a consistent view of structure & dynamics from the available data.

Education

Advanced Genomic Data Mining

Data mining allows us to make sense of the information found in data banks. As part of our Education Collection, Fernández-Suárez and Birney focus on advanced ways of interacting with BioMart using other applications to retrieve information through different platforms.

Image Credit: Guillaume Paumier (CC-SA)

Structure-Guided Comparative Analysis of Proteins: Principles, Tools, and Applications for Predicting Function

How can we make meaningful use of genomic and proteomic data from genome sequencing projects and structural genomic initiatives? Based on an ISMB 2007 tutorial, Mazumder & Vasudevan define a ten-step procedure, that can be followed as a general rule for functional inference of an uncharacterized protein.

Featured Research

Noise during Rest Enables the Exploration of the Brain's Dynamic Repertoire

The authors provide a new explanation for the temporally coherent activity which has been observed in human brains at rest. They suggest that it reflects a deeper biological principle of organization and is a consequence of the space-time structure of primate anatomical connectivity.

Discarding Functional Residues from the Substitution Table Improves Predictions of Active Sites within Three-Dimensional Structures

Sungsam Gong & Tom Blundell demonstrate their new ESSTs using the program CRESCENDO to predict functional residues. Their methodology can better describe the degree of amino acid substitutions that are under structural restraints, enhancing our understanding of protein structure and function.

Spatial Bistability Generates hunchback Expression Sharpness in the Drosophila Embryo

In a fresh look at one of biology's best known developmental models, the authors propose that spatial bistability in the dynamics of hunchback gene self-regulation allows interpretation of the position-dependent information contained within the Bicoid gradient.