Computing in biological time: the design of an anticocaine molecule

We measure our lives in years, plan our activities according to orcadian rhythms, and gauge our health by counting breaths and heartbeats. Yet, our bodies\´ most natural timescale is only a fraction of a second. The cellular processes that keep us alive occur so fast that scientists often can\´t directly observe them, but computer simulations fill that gap amazingly well-considering that a single biochemical reaction that lasts only a billionth of a second might require an entire day to simulate on a supercomputer. At the molecular level, life already moves fast. In search of a better anticocaine medication, scientists at the University of Kentucky used computer simulations to create a "souped-up" version of the human enzyme that breaks down the drug even faster.