BIOINFORMATICS
History
Paulien Hogeweg coined the term "Bioinformatics" in 1970 to refer to the study of information processes in biotic systems. This definition placed bioinformatics as a field parallel to biophysics (the study of physical processes in biological systems) or biochemistry (the study of chemical processes in biological systems).
What is Bioinformatics?
Bioinformatics has become an important part of many areas of biology. In experimental molecular biology, bioinformatics techniques such as image and signal processing allow extraction of useful results from large amounts of raw data. In the field of genetics and genomics, it aids in sequencing and annotating genomes and their observed mutations. It plays a role in the analysis of gene and protein expression and regulation. In structural biology, it aids in the simulation and modeling of DNA, RNA, and protein structures as well as molecular interactions.
The primary goal of bioinformatics is to increase the understanding of biological processes. What sets it apart from other approaches, however, is its focus on developing and applying computationally intensive techniques to achieve this goal. Examples include: pattern recognition, data mining, machine learning algorithms, and visualization. Major research efforts in the field include sequence alignment, gene finding, genome assembly, drug design, drug discovery, protein structure alignment, protein structure prediction, prediction of gene expression and protein–protein interactions, genome-wide association studies, and the modeling of evolution.
Over the past few decades rapid developments in genomic and other molecular research technologies and developments in information technologies have combined to produce a tremendous amount of information related to molecular biology. Bioinformatics is the name given to these mathematical and computing approaches used to glean understanding of biological processes.
Common activities in bioinformatics include mapping and analyzing DNA and protein sequences, aligning DNA and protein sequences to compare them, and creating and viewing 3-D models of protein structures.
References
There are many research papers and references in the field of bioinformatics and because of the overwhelming data and information available nowadays, it has become an extremely complicated science. Within IBHO, we will be more focus in the applications of bioinformatics instead of its research data. Within the arena of applications, we will focus much more on health related therapeutic applications, techniques, products and services.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinformatics
Mount, David W. (May 2002). Bioinformatics: Sequence and Genome Analysis. Spring Harbor Press. ISBN 0-879-69608-7.
Hogeweg, P. (1978). "Simulating the growth of cellular forms". Simulation 31 (3): 90–96. doi:10.1177/003754977803100305.
Dayhoff, M.O. (1966) Atlas of protein sequence and structure. National Biomedical Research Foundation, 215 pp