BIOINFORMATICS

Summer 2016

by

DESIRAE BARTOS  

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CONCEPTS OF BIOINFORMATICS

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Introduction:

The study that combines biology with computer science. Computer technology is being used to solve biological problems on a smaller more molecular level. It involves mainly storing and managing biological information and data. The initial goal of bioinformatics was to store the biological data such as amino sequence and neurological concepts. Some research has revealed cellular activity, which has been helpful in concluding how specific cells will act under disease conditions.

Origin and History of Bioinformatics:  

Genetics is where the idea of Bioinformatics all started. Genetics all leads back to Gregor Mendel, who did many experiments to test genetics and heredity on plants. Mendel’s research was really the gateway into all the current genetic studies and discoveries. Now there have been many researchers who have worked together to fully map the human genome and what every gene does and how each gene can be expressed. After coming up with all of these new discoveries many scientist realized that there was an increased need for a database that was big enough to hold all the data that was being collected at this time such as protein structure analysis, gene and protein functional information, data from patients and metabolic processes.

Importance:

Many feel that the best way to advance in medicine and science is to ensure that everyone has access to the medical information and the scientific information. The way to accomplish this is to have a system where all this information is stored and can be extracted from and used to answer questions and make more scientific discoveries. The main discoveries and insights that bioinformatics can help us with it DNA sequence, protein sequence, protein structure and protein function.There is a branch or sect of bioinformatics that involves predicting the structure of a protein as well as the function of that protein. This branch is called homology. In homology they use the protein sequence to figure out the structure of the proteins and they they can find out which genes when expressed are responsible for the structure and formation of the protein.  There has already been a ton of research done involving this topic.  Bioinformatics can also be used in a non-medical environment. It can be used in agriculture to help with nutritional value and increasing the amount of agriculture that is produced in different countries. Bioinformatics is also a tool for reducing discovery time. If we have a computer system that can do much of the work for us it will limit the time needed for things like drug and medicine discoveries.

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Difference between Bioinformatics and Computational biology:  

The main difference between the two is that bioinformaticians are biologist who use the advanced tools of the computer to solve and answer big biological questions. Then people who specialize in computer biology are the ones who come up with the algorithms to create the tools that they use in bioinformatics.

Biological database:

This is a database that contains a ton medical and scientific information as well as projects that have been done by other scientist that led to various discoveries. The information in the databases help to do various things such as discover new medicine and figure out ways to cure new diseases. Having information like this is helpful because it saves time. Now not every person has to perform every experiment and test, they can just get the information from a database and use it continue with their research and even further it. You can also use these types of databases if you come up with a problem in your research and you want to investigate to see if anyone else has ever experienced the same thing. This saves a lot of time, stress and unnecessary experiments and trials. There are a ton of biological databases all around the world.

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Bioinformatics in Agriculture:

One of the main goals of bioinformatics is sequencing. Sequencing is putting things into a order that is accessible and understandable for bioinformaticians. So bioinformatics is essential and helpful in the agricultural world because it can help to sequence the genome of plants and animals. This is useful because with the sequencing of the genes we can pinpoint the good ones and the bad ones. WIth this  information we can do cross breeding and gene manipulation to produce the most ideal plants and animals.