What are the key issues that make computational toxicology a fast growing scientific field?
Computational toxicology is possible because of two significant advances that have evolved over the past decade: the incredible development of computing power, and the development of modern molecular biology. The tools of modern biology, including genomics, proteomics and metabonomics, allow scientists to ask questions about cellular processes at a depth and speed that simply was not possible even five years ago. Today, one scientist working in his lab can acquire more data on cellular functions than a team of researchers working together for months could have produced during the 1990s. The union of these forces, and their continued rapid evolution, are opening doors for long-standing problems to be resolved. This possibility is now attracting a number of scientists from other fields, such as engineering and physics, to apply their skills to environmental problems.
