Life is about to get a lot easier for medical researchers, but a lot more difficult for companies trying to make a buck selling them tools to store and analyze genomic data. When the Human Genome Project successfully concluded in 2003, it had taken 13 years to complete its goal of fully sequencing the human genome. Earlier this month, two firms — Life Technologies and Illumina– announced instruments that can do the same thing in a day, one for only $1,000. That’s likely going to mean a lot of data.

via As genomics data approaches exascale, cloud could save the day — Cloud Computing News.

Obsessive gamers hours at the computer have now topped scientists efforts to improve a model enzyme, in what researchers say is the first crowdsourced redesign of a protein.The online game Foldit, developed by teams led by Zoran Popovic, director of the Center for Game Science, and biochemist David Baker, both at the University of Washington in Seattle, allows players to fiddle at folding proteins on their home computers in search of the best-scoring lowest-energy configurations.

via Online Gamers Achieve First Crowd-Sourced Redesign of Protein: Scientific American.

This fall, Amazon built a virtual supercomputer atop its Elastic Compute Cloud — a web service that spins up virtual servers whenever you want them — and this nonexistent mega-machine outraced all but 41 of the world’s real supercomputers.

Yes, beneath Amazon’s virtual supercomputer, there’s real hardware. When all is said and done, it’s a cluster of machines, like any other supercomputer. But that virtual layer means something. This isn’t a supercomputer that Amazon uses for its own purposes. It’s a supercomputer that can be used by anyone.

via Amazon Builds World’s Fastest Nonexistent Supercomputer | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com.