Bioinformatics An Introduction
The huge number of
discoveries in the field of biology in the last few years
due to the invention of the sophisticated machineries
necessitated the discovery of the tools to index the
structural information data and to maintain it for the
future retrieval also analysis and interpretation of data.
To produce the kind of tools biology had to merge with few
others sciences such as statistics and information
technology, so given the name Bioinformatics.
It has been said that the ultimate goal of
bioinformatics is to discover the new biological insights
as well as to create a global perspectives from which
unifying principles in biology can be discerned.
The significance of bioinformatics ranges from gathering
and creating the raw data and develop elegant methods for
examining the data. These all are done in a much more open
environment where information and expertise are freely
shared. Bioinformatics is the most upcoming rather booming
area in biological sciences at this time the sciences is
developing at a very high pace we ourselves can imagine
the rate of it, nearly half decade earlier scientists were
working towards the sequencing of genome of several
organisms, and sequencing of human genomes itself was a
dream, but in the few years so much were done that
currently they are working towards the post-genomic era.
The development in any field of biology adds to the
progress of bioinformatics.
As the role of bioinformatics ranges from knowing of
molecular biology, gene sequencing, directly accessing to
the very beginning point of organic-life, biological
software development needed thereto to drug designing and
thereby easing the bio-problem solving pathways they play
an important role in health, nutrition, economy, social
science and other bio-scientific areas in the day to day
life of man kind as whole.
Bioinformatics has mainly three-four disciplines:
- i) To communicate with the Institutions engaged in the Biological research and applications.
- ii) Access, search and retrieval of Biological information.
- iii) Handling and management of Biological data, including its organization, analysis etc.
- iv) Analysis and interpretation of Biological data through the computational approaches.
PRESENT SCOPE OF BIOINFORMATICS
Bioinformatics has not been a new topic these days as it
has evolved into a full fledged scientific discipline over
the last decade. The definition of Bioinformatics is not
restricted to computational molecular biology and
computational structural biology. It now includes
comparative genomics, structural genomics,
transcriptiomics, Proteomics, cellunomics and metabolic
pathway engineering. Product of these fields have direct
application in day to day healthcare, medicine, discovery
of next generation drugs, development of agricultural
products, renewable energy, environmental protection etc.
The prospective of Bioinformatics is to identify the
useful genes leading to the development of new gene
Product, drug discovery and drug development.
Bioinformatics has become a frontline applied science and
is of utmost importance to study new biology. The growth
in full genomic sequence, structural genomics, proteomics,
micro array etc. will be very slow without application of
bioinformatics. Infact, usefulness of these areas to solve
complex biological problem will be limited without
bioinformatics. The main data includes the genomes and
proteomes of human and other organisms, 3-D structures and
functions of proteins, microarray data, metabolic
pathways, cell lines & hybridoma, biodiversity etc. The
sudden growth in the quantitative data in Biology has
rendered data capture, data warehousing and data mining as
major issues for biotechnologists and biologist.
Availability of enomic and other data has resulted in the
realization of the inherent biocomplexity issues which
call for innovative tools for synthesis of knowledge. The
new paradigm, now emerging, is that all the genes will be
known in the sense of being resident in database
available electronically,and the starting point of
biological investigation will be theoretical and scientist
will begin with a theoretical assumption and only then
they can test the hypothesis. With clear understanding of
the biological process at the molecular level, scientist
have developed new technique to analyze genes on an
industrial scale resulting in a new area of science known
as "Genomics". Information Technology, particularly the
internet, is utilized to collect, distribute and access
ever-increasing data which are later analyzed with
mathematics and statistics-based tools. Bioinformatics has
a key role to play in the cutting edge Research &
Development areas such as functional genomics, proteomics,
protein engineering, pharmacogenomics, discovery of new
drugs and vaccines, molecular diagnostic kits,
agro-biotechnology etc. This has attracted attention of
several companies and entrepreneurs. As a result, a large
number of Bioinformatics-based start-up has been launched
and the trend is likely to continue. This has necessitated
the availability of a large number of formally trained
individuals in Bioinformatics. A Bioinformaticians must
acquire expertise in the essential multi-disciplinary
fields that comprise the core of this new science. Quality
research and education in Bioinformatics are vital not
only to meet the existing challenges but also to set and
accomplish new goals in life science.