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Basic Definition: Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics is conceptualizing Biology in terms of molecules and then applying informatics techniques(derived from statistics, mathematics, computational science) to understand and organize the information associated with these molecules, on a large scale.

Bioinformatics uses advances in the area of computer science, information science, computer and information technology, communication technology to solve complex problems in life sciences and particularly in biotechnology. Data capture, data warehousing and data mining have become major issues for biotechnologists and biological scientists due to sudden growth in quantitative data in biology such as complete genomes of biological species including human genome, protein sequences, protein 3-D structures, metabolic pathways databases, cell line & hybridoma information, biodiversity related information.

Fredj Tekaia at the Institute Pasteur offers this definition of bioinformatics:“ The mathematical, statistical and computing methods that aim to solve biological problems using DNA and amino acid sequences and related information.“ .

Origin and Application of Bioinformatics

The first bioinformatics/biological databases were constructed a few years after the first protein sequences began to become available. The first protein sequence reported was that of bovine insulin in 1956 , consisting of 51 residues. Nearly a decade later, the first nucleic acid sequence was reported, that of yeast alanine tRNA with 77 bases. Just a year later, Dayhoff gathered all the availablesequence data to create the first bioinformatic database .The Protein DataBank followed in 1972 with a collectionof ten X-ray crystallographic protein structures, and the SWISSPROT protein sequence database began in 1987. A huge variety of divergent data resources of different typesand sizes are now available either in the public domain or more recently from commercial third parties. All of the original databases were organised in a very simpleway with data tries being stored in flat files, either one perentry, or as a single large text file.