Reverse-engineering gene-regulatory networks using evolutionary algorithms and grid computing.

Objective: Living organisms regulate the expression of genes using complex interactions of transcription factors, messenger RNA and active protein products. Due to their complexity, gene-regulatory networks are not fully understood.However, by building computational models it is possible to gain insight into their function and operation.

Assessment of disease severity (in terms of function) using the internet.

Objective: To determine whether visual analog scales (VAS) can be used over the Internet to assess the patient with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) accurately or if the use of this different medium will affect the results.

Methods: Patients with AS (n = 50) attending a physiotherapy/educational course completed both an Internet based and a paper based version of the Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Functional Index (BASFI) that uses VAS. The Internet version was completed twice to assess intrarespondent variation reliability and compared with the paper version to assess interrespondent variation reliability.