PLoS Computational Biology Collections
In order to highlight specific topics, from time to time PLoS Computational Biology gathers together collections of articles. As with all of our content, all material within collections is published under a Creative Commons Attribution License; hence users can, with attribution, download, print, or reuse in any way either individual articles or entire collections.
Ten Simple Rules
Written by PLoS Computational Biology Editor-in-Chief Philip E. Bourne, sometimes with collaborators, the "Ten Simple Rules" provide a quick, concentrated guide for mastering some of the professional challenges research scientists face in their careers.
Education
Recognizing the need for training and education in bioinformatics and computational biology specifically targeted to biologists, PLoS Computational Biology launched its "Education" section in January 2006. The goals are to provide practical and background information on important computational methods used to investigate interesting biological questions as well as resource tools that may be used at your institution for training scientists at all stages of their career.
Developing Computational Biology
A year-long series of Perspective articles from computational biologists in a variety of countries, each of whom offers their personal viewpoint on the history, current status, and future of computational biology in their region. Philip E. Bourne and Steven Brenner asked the authors to describe the specific challenges they have faced, their perceived strengths and the institutions (government and private), opportunities, and difficulties of computational biology in their country as a whole, including that of scientists training overseas and returning home. Please use our commentary features to share your thoughts or experiences in these countries.
Biocurators
The number and scope of scientific databases has soared in recent years, creating a new profession, the biocurator. These "museum catalogers of the Internet age" face a continuous struggle of making ever growing amounts of data accessible. In two perspectives for PLoS Computational Biology, accompanied by an editorial, light is shed on their work and its challenges.
Core Facilities
Biomedical research is benefiting from the wealth of new data generated in the laboratory through new instrumentation, greater computational resources, and massive repositories of public domain data. Using these data to make scientific discoveries is sometimes straightforward, but can be complicated by the number and breadth of public sources available to the researcher as well as by the plethora of tools from which to choose. These articles aim to explain how to set up and administrate Core Facilities, and the benefits to researchers and institutions of so doing.