This document discusses bioinformatics and computational biology. It defines bioinformatics as conceptualizing biology in terms of molecules and applying informatics techniques like mathematics and computer science to understand and organize molecular information on a large scale. Computational biology refers to developing algorithms and statistical models to analyze biological data through computers. The document provides examples of areas studied in bioinformatics like sequence analysis, genome annotation, and regulation analysis. It also outlines some important applications of bioinformatics like gene therapy and personalized medicine.

1. Abhiroop Ghatak
ghatak.20@gmail.com
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3. Bioinformatics
 (Molecular) bio – informatics: bioinformatics is
conceptualizing biology in terms of molecules (in the
sense of physical chemistry) and applying
"informatics techniques" (derived from disciplines
such as applied mathematics ,computer science and
statistics) to understand and organize the
information associated with these molecules, on a
large scale. In short, bioinformatics is a
management information system for molecular
biology and has many practical applications.
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4.  Computational biology and bioinformatics are
multidisciplinary fields, involving researchers from different areas
of specialty, including (but in no means limited to) statistics,
computer science, physics, biochemistry, genetics, molecular
biology and mathematics. The goal of these two fields is as
follows:
• Bioinformatics: Typically refers to the field concerned with the
collection and storage of biological information. All matters
concerned with biological databases are considered
bioinformatics.
• Computational biology: Refers to the aspect of developing
algorithms and statistical models necessary to analyze biological
data through the aid of computers.
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5. Image Source: http://ccb.wustl.edu/
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6. Image source: www.biotec.or.th/Genome/ whatGenome.html
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8.  Bioinformatics is associated typically with
massive databases of gene and protein
sequence and structure/function information
databases.
 New sequences, new structures or protein/gene
function that are discovered are searched,
(compared) against what is already known,
(gathered), and deposited into the databases.
 (These searches are done by remote computer
access using various bioinformatics tools.)
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9. Molecular Biology Information
Redundancy and Multiplicity
 Different sequences have the same
structure.
 One organism has many similar genes
 A single gene may have multiple functions
 Genomic sequence redundancy due to the
genetic code
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10. General Types of informatics” techniques in
Bioinformatics
 Text String Comparison
 Text Search
 1D Alignment
 Significance Statistics
 Finding Patterns
 AI / Machine Learning
 Clustering
 Datamining
 Databases
 Building, Querying
 Object DB
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11. Contd…
 Physical Simulation
 Electrostatics
 Numerical Algorithms
 Simulation
 Geometry
 Robotics
 Graphics (Surfaces, Volumes)
 Comparison and 3D Matching
 (Visision, recognition
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12. What is done in Bioinformatics?
 Analysis and interpretation of various types of
biological data including: nucleotide and amino
acid sequences, protein domains, and protein
structures.
 Development of new algorithms and statistics with
which to assess biological information, such as
relationships among members of large data sets.
 Development and implementation of tools that
enable efficient access and management of
different types of information, such as various
databases, integrated mapping information.
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13. Aims of bioinformatics
 Improve content and utility of databases.
 Develop better tools for data generation, capture,
and annotation.
 Develop and improve tools and databases for
comprehensive functional studies.
 Develop and improve tools for representing and
analyzing sequence similarity and variation.
 Create mechanisms to support effective approaches
for producing robust, exportable software that can
be widely shared.
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14. Why Is Bioinformatics So Important?
The rationale for applying computational approaches to
facilitate the understanding of various biological
processes includes:
 a more global perspective in experimental design
 the ability to capitalize on the emerging technology of
database-mining - the process by which testable hypotheses
are generated regarding the function or structure of a gene or
protein of interest by identifying similar sequences in better
characterized organisms
 Although a human disease may not be found in exactly
the same form in animals, there may be sufficient data
for an animal model that allow researchers to make
inferences about the process in humans.
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15. Biological problems that computers
can help with:
 I cloned a gene - is it a known gene?
 Does the sequence match? Is the sequence any good?
 Does it look like anything else in the database?
 Which family does it belong to?
 How can I find more family members?
 I have an orphan receptor, how can I find its legend?
 How can I find out which other proteins my sequence interacts with?
 I have linkage to a specific region on chromosome x, how do I find
genes in that region?
 I have an RNA or protein sequence with poor expression and I'd
like to know its structure and/or function is?
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16. Major research areas
1. Computational evolutionary biology
2. Sequence analysis
3. Genome annotation
Genome annotation is the process of attaching biological information to
sequences. It consists of two main steps:
 identifying elements on the genome, a process called Gene Finding, and
 attaching biological information to these elements.
4. Analysis of regulation
Regulation is the complex orchestration of events starting with an extra
cellular signal such as a hormone and leading to an increase or decrease in
the activity of one or more proteins.
n In cancer Analysis of mutations
n Comparative genomics
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17. Application of Bioinformatics
 Gene therapy
 Personalized medicine
 Improve nutritional quality
 Alternative energy sources
 The reality of bio weapon creation
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18. Major ReSearch Labs
 The Bioinformatics Research Center (BRC) at North
Carolina State University.
 The Bioinformatics Research Group (BiRG) at Wright
State University
 Bioinformatics @ The University of Manchester,UK.
 Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry
,Yale University,New Haven, USA.
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19.  For additional information visit
http://www.geocities.com/bioinformaticsweb/
index.html
 http://www.bioinformatics.org/
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