BioInformatics is the
emerging field that deals with the application of computers to the collection,
organization and sharing of biological data to solve problems on the molecular
level. More appropriately, bioinformatics is the mathematical, statistical and
computing methods that aim to solve biological problems using DNA and amino
acid sequence and related information.
Over
the past few decades, rapid developments in genomic and other molecular research
technologies and developments in information technologies have combined to
produce a tremendous amount of information related to molecular biology. In developing countries like nigeria, it has
a key role to play in arears like agriculture where It can be used for
increasing the nutritional content and increasing the volume of the
agricultural produce and implanting disease resistance. In the pharmaceutical
sector, it can be used to reduce the time and cost involved in drug discovery
process particularly for third world diseases, to custom design drugs and to
develop personalized medicine.
The
huge increase in the scale of data being produced in this genomic era has seen
a need to incorporate computers into this research process. Sequence
generation, its subsequent storage, interpretation and analysis are entirely
computer dependent tasks. One of the challenges facing bioinformatics is
1. Efficient
and Intelligent storage of this massive biological database
2. Easy
and reliable access to this data.
It is important to
point out that this data itself is useless and meaningless before analysis and
it is impossible for even a trained biologist to begin to interpret it
manually. As a result, automated computer tools must be developed to allow the
extraction of meaningful biological information. There are three central
biological processes into which bioinformatics tools such as support vector
machines, neural networks e.t.c can be applied
1. DNA
sequence which determines protein sequence
2. Protein
sequence which determines protein structure
3. Protein
structure which determines protein function
The important
sub-disciplines of bioinformatics are:
1. The
development and implementation of tools that enable efficient access to, and
use and management of various types of information.
2. The
development of new algorithms (mathematical formulas) and statistics with which
to assess relationship among members of large data sets, such as methods to
locate a gene within a sequence, predict protein structure and/or function, and
cluster protein sequences into families of related sequences.
Biological
databases
Biological
databases are huge data bases of mostly sequence data pouring in from many
genome sequencing projects going on all over the world. They are an important
tool in assisting scientist to understand and explain a host of biological
phenomena. The information about DNA, proteins and the function of proteins
must be stored in an intelligent fashion, so that scientists can solve problems
quickly and easily using all available information. As a result, the information
is stored in databanks, many of which are accessible to everyone on the
internet. A few examples are a databank containing protein structures, a
databank containing protein sequences and their function (Swiss-Prot), a databank
with information about enzymes and their function (ENZYME) e.t.c.
The
Advantage and Usefulnes of Databanks
Using databanks, one can perform all kinds of
comparisons and search queries. If for example, you know a protein which causes
a disease in humans, you might look into a databank to see if a similar protein
has previously been described and what this protein does in the human body.
Using this known information will make it easier and quicker to develop a drug
against the disease or a test to detect the disorder in an early stage.
Computer
Programming in Bioinformatics: JAVA in Bioinformatics
The geographical scattered research centres all
around the globe ranging from private to academic settings are using Java to
program most bioinformatics software. In fact, Java is emerging as a key player
in bioinformatics. Phsyiome Sciences computer-based biological simulation
technologies and Bionformatics Solutions PatternHunter are two examples of the
growing adoption of Java in bioinformatics.
Perl in Bioinformatics
String manipulation, regular expression matching,
file parsing, data format interconversion e.t.c are the common text-processing
tasks performed in bioinformatics. Perl excels in such tasks and is being used
by many developers. Yer, there are no standard modules designed in Perl
specifically for the field of bioinformatics. However, developers normally
designed several of their own individual modeules for any specific purpose,
which have become quite popular and are coordinated by the BioPerl project.
BioInformatics
in Agriculture
Bioinformatics can be used to produce stronger, more
drought, disease and insect resistant crops and improve the quality of
likestock making them healthier, more disease resistant and more productive.
Explanation:
The most
critical tasks in bioinformatics involves the finding of genes in the DNA
sequences of various organisms, developing methods to predict the structure and
function of newly discovered proteins and structural RNA sequences, clustering
protein sequences into families of related sequences, development of protein
models, aligning similar proteins and generating phylogenetic trees to examine
evolutionary relationships. The sequencing of the genomes of microbes, plants
and animals should have enormous benefits for the agricultural community.
Computational analysis of these sequence data generated by genome sequencing,
proteomics and array-based technologies is critically important. Bionformatics
tools can be used to search for genes within these genomes and to elucidate
their functions.
