DEFINATION OF BIOINFORMATICS

Bioinformatics is predominantly a discipline for handling of genetic
information. Bioinformatics involves research, development, or application of various computational tools and approaches to acquire, store, visualize, and interpret medical or biological data.

Easy access to bioinformatics tools, and efficient analyses of bioinformatics data, are important factors for integrating distributed research findings and for suggesting new hypotheses. Needless to say, the contribution of the Internet for this integration is immense, enabling globally both generation of data and access to data

AIMS OF BIOINFORMATICS

• Organisation of data in such a way that it allows researchers to access existing information and to submit new entries as they are produced while data creation is an essential task, the information stored in these database is useless unless analyzed. Thus the purpose of bioinformatics extends well beyond mere volume control.
• To develop tools and resourses that help in the analysis of data. For example , having sequenced a particular protein, compare it with previously characterized sequences. This requires more than just a straightforward database search. As such, programs such as FASTA consider what constitutes a biologically significant resemblance.Development of such resourses requires extensive knowledge of computational theory as well as a through understanding of biology.
• Use of these tools to analyse the indivial systems in details.

 

THE NEED OF BIOINFORMATICS

• Whole Genome Analyses and Sequences
• Experimental Analyses involving Thousands of Genes simultaneously
• DNA Chips and Array Analyses
  • Expression Arrays
  • Comparative Analyses between Species and Strains
• Proteomics: 'Proteome' of an Organism ... 2D gels, Mass Spec
• Medical applications: Genetic Disease ... SNPs
  • Pharmaceutical and Biotech Industry
• Forensic applications
• Agricultural applications

BIOINFORMATICS AND ITS SCOPE

Bioinformatics, the multidisciplinary area, has grown so much that one divides it into molecular, organal and species bioinformatics. Issues related to biodiversity and environment, cloning of higher animals such as dolly, tissue culture and cloning of plants have brought out that bioinformatics is not only a support branch of science but is also a subject that directs future course of research in biotechnology and life science.The importance and usefulness of bioinformatics is realized in last few years by many industries.Therefore, large bioinformatics R & D divisions arebeing established in many pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies and even in other conventional industry dealing with biological. Bioinformatics is thus rated as number one career in the field of biosciences. In short, bioinformatics deals with database creation, data analysis and modeling. Data capturing is done not only from printed material but also from network resourses. Databases in biology are generally in the multimedia form organized in relational database model. Modeling is done not only on single biological molecule but also on multiple systems thus requiring a use of high performance computing systems.