Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that involves molecular biology, genetics, computer science, mathematics and statistics. It applies computational techniques to understand and organized information and address biological problems on the molecular model. Data-intensive, large-scale biological problems are solved from a computational perspective.

Bioinformatics has arisen from the needs of biologists to utilize and help interpret the vast amounts of data they gathered in genomic research. Bioinformatics approaches are motivated by the evolution of organisms and the complexity of working with incomplete and noisy data.

A bioinformatics solution commonly involves the following steps:

1. Collect statistics from biological data.

2. Build a computational model.

3. Solve a computational modeling problem.

4. Test and evaluate a computational algorithm.

The best-known application of bioinformatics is in the analysis of DNA sequences. The field now has more recent counterparts, proteomics and functional genomics.

First steps

The pioneers of biological data analysis and storage were Robert S. Ledley, Margaret O. Dayhoff and Richard V. Eck.

The 'Use of Computers in Biology and Medicine' book by Robert Ledley , published in 1965, explored the possibilities of digital computing applications in biology and medicine.

Dayhoff and Eck searched published literature and compiled all known protein sequences. They introduced the one-letter code for amino acids, which have been used since that time. The first printed collection of sequences named "Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure", was published in 1965.