Last summer, a member of the biology department of the University of Udine in Italy approached Nicola Vitacolonna with an intriguing project. The ANREP program, which annotates structural motifs in gene or protein sequences, was out of date having been written more than a decade ago. Although still used by molecular biologists, its slow computing ability meant a straightforward multiple search could take all night on a desktop PC. The Udine biologist wanted Vitacolonna, a postdoctoral fellow in computational biology, to write a program that could do the job more quickly.
For the next six months, Vitacolonna embraced the project as his main work. In March, he will present the final release of his new program, SmartFinder, which promises to speed up searches by a factor of ten. He will complete his postdoc position this summer, and he hopes to get a new job shortly thereafter. Until then, Vitacolonna will ...
