What is Bioinformatics ?
Bioinformatics and computational biology involve the use of techniques including applied mathematics, informatics, statistics, computer science, artificial intelligence, chemistry and biochemistry to solve biological problems usually on the molecular level. Research in computational biology often overlaps with systems biology. Major research efforts in the field include sequence alignment, gene finding, genome assembly, protein structure alignment, protein structure prediction, prediction of gene expression and protein-protein interactions, and the modeling of evolution. The terms bioinformatics and computational biology are often used interchangeably. However bioinformatics more properly refers to the creation and advancement of algorithms, computational and statistical techniques, and theory to solve formal and practical problems posed by or inspired from the management and analysis of biological data. Computational biology, on the other hand, refers to hypothesis-driven investigatio
In simple terms, bioinformatics is the aplication of information sciences to biology. This specialised stream of science deals with the creation and maintenance of databases of biological information which includes such things as nucleic acid sequences and protein sequences. It also includes the softwares that are required for the detailed analysis of the genes and proteins e.g. analysis of gene sequences for restriction sites and regulatory elements, open reading frames, comparison with the genes from other sources, designing of primers for PCR and hybridization studies, construction of three dimensional proteins encoded by them, delineation of the functional domains etc.
Bioinformatics is the field of science in which biology, computer science, and information technology merge to form a single discipline. The ultimate goal of the field is to enable the discovery of new biological insights as well as to create a global perspective from which unifying principles in biology can be discerned. At the beginning of the “genomic revolution”, a bioinformatics concern was the creation and maintenance of a database to store biological information, such as nucleotide and amino acid sequences. Development of this type of database involved not only design issues but the development of complex interfaces whereby researchers could both access existing data as well as submit new or revised data. Ultimately, however, all of this information must be combined to form a comprehensive picture of normal cellular activities so that researchers may study how these activities are altered in different disease states. Therefore, the field of bioinformatics has evolved such that t
Bioinformatics is the application of information technology to the management and analysis of biological data. It is a rapidly evolving scientific discipline. Bioinformaticians are tool-builders and it is critical that we understand biological problems as well as computational solutions in order to develop useful computer tools. Research in bioinformatics can encompass anything from the abstraction of the properties of a biological system into a mathematical or physical model, to the implementation of new algorithms for sequence data analysis, to the development of databases and web tools to access them. The ultimate goal of bioinformatics is to enable the discovery of new biological insights as well as to create a global perspective from which unifying principles in biology can be discerned. There are three important sub-disciplines within bioinformatics: – The development of new algorithms and statistics with which to assess relationships among members of large data sets. – The analy
