Comments on: A Nobel Prize for BLAST?

By: An open letter to the Nobel Foundation to overhual the current system | Abhishek Tiwari

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 05:44:42 +0000

[...] An open letter to the Nobel Foundation to overhual the current system In an open letter to the Nobel Foundation published on newscientist.com, a group of scientists call for overhaule of current system of Nobel prizes. The panel which includes 2001 Nobel prize winner in physiology Tim Hunt and others argue for a broader scope for these prizes and recommend two changes: (1) the creation of Nobel prizes for the global environment and public health and (2) the expansion of the prize for physiology or medicine to recognize contributions from across the life sciences (such as bioinformatics). [...]

By: Syed Asad Rahman

Syed Asad Rahman — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 04:16:12 +0000

A Nobel Prize for BLAST?- by Fisheye Perspective http://bit.ly/adv6pw

By: Srayanta

Srayanta — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 20:16:27 +0000

I have a few points against giving a nobel prize for BLAST
1) The paper is terribly written especially PSI-BLAST. A method of such high impact should be written about more explicitly and clearly.
2) Blast is based on profile-profile alignment. So first of all David Eisenberg is a worthy noble prize winner. Some of the most notable concepts/techniques of both computational as well as experimental biology was provided by him . For example; sequence profiles and profile-profile alignment: the most powerful tool to extract evolutionary similarity between proteins, fragment assembly protocol based on which all current successful Structure Predictions methods are based including Rosetta and TASSER, Domain Swapping, the first crystal structure of an amyloid etc etc. The guys contribution to protein structure biology is momentous and needs to be rewarded

By: Andreas Wilm

Andreas Wilm — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 23:44:55 +0000

via google reader: A Nobel Prize for BLAST?- by Fisheye Perspective http://bit.ly/6LvNee

By: kanagarajadurai

kanagarajadurai — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:50:45 +0000

A Nobel Prize for BLAST? http://bit.ly/48661f http://ff.im/beaS5

By: abhishektiwari

abhishektiwari — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 06:19:33 +0000

“Spirit of openness” thats very interesting point Rob. I can just imagine how hard it could be to develop a data intensive algorithm like BLAST at that time. I am sure this openness has inspired many people over the time and as a result we can see better and powerful computational tools for biology.

By: Rob Russell

Rob Russell — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:40:10 +0000

Couldn’t agree more, but one other major thing, is that all three of these individuals (and the entire BLAST/FASTA team) fostered what has become a spirit of openness in molecular biology software and data that is unlike other fields like chemistry where data sharing and availability is still a real headache (e.g. CAS/ACS malarky). Many other people had written software that probably could ultimately have done the same thing as blast (though I doubt any of these people would have got their act together to the same degree), but mostly this was done in the age where software and data in molecular biology was still guarded and hoarded in an almost paranoid fashion. So its actually a lot more than the citations, but perhaps the citations arise as a result of this spirit.

By: Raunak Shrestha

Raunak Shrestha — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 15:30:33 +0000

A Nobel Prize for BLAST? http://bit.ly/u1kpU

By: Anil Thomas

Anil Thomas — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:00:32 +0000

A Nobel Prize for BLAST? http://bit.ly/4moN2w via @abhishektiwari

By: Abhishek Tiwari

Abhishek Tiwari — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:41:30 +0000

@attilacsordas may be this one A Nobel Prize for BLAST? http://bit.ly/11D3uC