Bioinformatics is a branch of biological science which deals with the study of methods for storing, retrieving and analyzing biological data, such as nucleic acid (DNA/RNA) and protein sequence, structure, function, pathways and genetic interactions.
Simply we can say that bioinformatics is the combination of computer systems and biological systems (figure: 1). It generates new knowledge that is useful in such fields as drug design and development of new software tools to create that knowledge. Bioinformatics also deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, structural biology, software engineering, data mining, image processing, modeling and simulation, discrete mathematics, control and system theory, circuit theory, and statistics.
Bioinformatics derives knowledge from computer analysis of biological data. These can consist of the information stored in the genetic code, but also experimental results from various sources, patient statistics, and scientific literature. Research in bioinformatics includes method development for storage, retrieval, and analysis of the data. Bioinformatics is a rapidly developing branch of biology and is highly interdisciplinary, using techniques and concepts from informatics, statistics, mathematics, chemistry, biochemistry, physics, and linguistics. It has many practical applications in different areas of biology and medicine.
Roughly, bioinformatics describes any use of computers to handle biological information. In practice the definition used by most people is narrower; bioinformatics to them is a synonym for "computational molecular biology"- the use of computers to characterize the molecular components of living things.
Commonly used software tools and technologies in this field include Java, XML, Perl, pymol, C, C++, Ruby, Python, R, mysql, SQL, CUDA, MATLAB, and Microsoft Excel.
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