Artificial Intelligence and Molecular Biology

Lawrence Hunter

National Library of Medicine (NLM)
Bldg. 38A, MS-54, Bethesda. MD 20894, USA
e-mail: hunter@nlm.nih.gov

Artificial Intelligence technology has been applied to the problems of molecular biology for some time now, and there are some notable successes. In this talk, I look to the future and try to describe some of the upcoming biological challenges that AI technologies may be useful in addressing. These include analyzing whole genome sequences, infering molecular function from multiple information sources, building simulations of complex molecular systems and playing a more significant role in drug design. I will also discuss the role that molecular biology has played in shaping the course of modern computer science research, both by providing new kinds of problems and by suggesting new metaphors for computation.