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
The fact that bioinformatics now
plays a very important role in the present day world cant be
denied by the modern society but the trained professionals in
the field are insufficient. So to generate the resources for
harnessing the information revolution the ten bioinformatics
centers and forty four bioinformatics sub-centers have been
established all over India.
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.
