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Researchers Use Google's Search Algorithms To Fight Cancer
MatthewVD writes "German scientists have modified Google's PageRank algorithm to scan tumors and learn more about how cancers progress. PageRank orders results based on how other web pages are connected to them via hyperlinks; the modified algorithm, NetRank, scans how genes and proteins in a cell are similarly connected through a network of interactions with their neighbors. This approach could also yield new therapies to help combat tumors."
Your tumor's linked to you thyroid, your thyroid's linked to your larynx, Google's gonna steal all your data...
Serious question: will their be an AdSense-style scheme for recurring cancer-sufferers to accrue referral income?
It's not a "google" algorithm. Google's contribution to science isn't the ranking algorithm, it's the _scale_ of application on the order of billions of nodes. People have been doing calculations using "PageRank" for about a century before Google was founded (by hand obviously).
Gee, how did not anyone think about there being relation between different body parts when cancer spreads??
Well yeah, that's how science research works. The bloody obvious must be consensually established before it gets considered a valid work hypothesis or argument. And once a consensus takes hold on the wrong conclusion, it takes an impressive amount of contrarian data to shift opinions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiable#Kuhn_and_Lakatos
Die. Just die in a fire. Die, die, die.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The idea is interesting but the paper seems flawed. They integrate data and then look at how genes are positioned in the network with page-rank. The problem is that genes positioning in the network is highly dependent on how studied they are. Therefore, very well studied will get a high "NetRank." Genes known to be predictive of cancer progression are very well studied (lots of fudning in that area). This means the algorithm is basically finding and returning a list of what we already know, and it turns out that what we know is reasonably predictive when you combine 400+ markers.
I'm surprised this made it by peer review without additional experiments to assess the role that this bias plays.
The thigh bone's connected to the leg bone; the leg bone's connected to the ankle bone...
Are you sure it was cottage cheese and alligator clamps? Not sour cream or banana clips or something? I ... can't reproduce your search results.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
It has nothing to do with anatomical connection between body parts. That's a naive assumption. People have known that cancer spreads from the original tumor to a metastatic site via blood and lymph vessels for a long time. The article is about identifying correlations between changes in expression of genes and proteins, and how these are linked to cancer progression and metastasis. Believe it or not, but every cell in your body is a machine with millions, if not billions, of working parts. One small change in one gene can have dramatic consequences on a number of molecular signaling pathways. Biological, and specifically cancer biological, research has long been focused on deciphering these molecular pathways and identifying the connections between them. So there's already a wealth of data, the key is making sense of it, generating hypotheses, and then testing the hypotheses. So, any additional tools in the arsenal are more than welcome.
Granted, I have no clue if the new application of Google's algorithm is useful or just something flashy to get a publication. But to dismiss the idea behind it as trivial is misguided.
Colour me surprised if cancer cells use Google to fight back.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!