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Re:$4,829-per-hour supercomputer built on Amazon cloud to fu... by epistasis on Thursday April 19, 2012 @12:11PM (#3863688)
I work on computational approaches to using known, wet-bench validated interactions along with high-throughput cancer data, and agree that much more high-throughput data is needed, more so than small-scale approaches. Quantitative measurements of interactions rates in vitro are no more trustworthy than computational methods on high-throughput data, because you never know what other cofactors may be affecting the interaction, or what compartmentalization or localization you missed in your model system that's different in a real system.

I see the only scientifically defensible way forward is to do large, data-rich networks like Eric Schadt does them. Individual wet-bench work is good to use as prior data, but it's just a hint at a part of a large, complex system, and overly reductive approaches are going to completely miss the big picture.

Re:$4,829-per-hour supercomputer built on Amazon cloud to fu... by xaa on Thursday April 19, 2012 @12:15PM (#3863712)
Unfortunately, for non-computational peers and reviewers, "high-throughput" is often a synonym for "fishing expedition". This perception is gradually changing, though.

Furthermore high-throughput assays are more expensive so people often cut corners on sample size.