More on Bioinformatics

Bio informatics is a subject that has extraordinary promise not just in the design of drugs and therapies but also in the basic understanding of life itself. It is the application of information technology to the management of biological data and is a rapidly evolving scientific discipline.


It encompasses research, development and application of computational tools and aims at expanding the use of biological, medical, behavioural, or health data. Hence data is acquired, stored, organized, archived and then analysed. Bio informatics relies on statistical methods.


Specialized work is carried on in drugs research, agrochemicals, hybridization, plastics and petroleum derivatives, environmental remediation etc.


Nature of Work

Bio informatics performs two critical roles : develops IT tools embodying novel algorithms and analytical techniques, or applies existing tools to achieve new insights into molecular biology in testing, documentation, running operating procedures and database administration, programming, software development, algorithm creation and scientific visualization. Bio informatics can be applied to all areas of life sciences and other fields like energy and textiles, pharmaceuticals and agriculture. Bio informatics is used for treatment of genetic diseases. Knowledge about the method in which drugs work at the genetic level finds applications in the treatment of cancer as well as infectious diseases like AIDS. Bio-informatics also throws light on toxicogenomics, a speciality that tries to find an answer as to why drugs work better on some patients than on others. Using bio informatics, drugs can be developed much faster to facilitate as well as accelerate the treatment of diseases.

The experiment on cloning is also an area of bio-informatics.


Study & Training

Bio informatics course covers : Introduction to genetics, molecular and cell biology, biochemistry, biotechnology, microbiology, evolutionary biology ; fundamentals of bio informatics ; branches and application areas of bio informatics ; use of software tools and databases available on the web ; Sequence analysis ; Protein modeling.


In addition to the above, depending on the standards of the institution, some introduction is also made in areas that influence the bio informatics :


Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid (DNA) Fingerprinting and computer science, MS Office, Linux, HTML and Perl. Students of bio informatics are expected to be proficient with knowledge of Java, Unix, C, C++, RDBMS such as Oracle and Sybase, CORBA, Perl, CGI and web scripting is required at the IT end.


Graduates in Computer Science, genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, mathematics, physical chemistry, pharmaceuticals, floriculture, statistics, electrical engineering, biotechnology or organic chemistry are suitable for this programme.


The Government of India through the Department of Biotechnology is also taking up certain initial steps with regard to bio informatics education in India. The Department has drafted a National Bio informatics Policy 2002 and has collaborated with IIT Delhi to launch a two-year M Tech. Course. More than 70 universities are connected through a network for a first ever supercomputing facility in the country for Bio informatics and computational biology.


Centre for Bio technical Technology in collaboration with a private computer-training institute has launched a one-year postgraduate diploma course with an assurance that fifty per cent of the students would be absorbed in various projects. The qualifications for eligibility are M.Sc. in life science, MBBS, B.Tech or MCA.

BIOINFORMATICS TOOLS IN LINUX

Sure have to try it...!!!!!!!!!

Why Bioinformatics is important..??

The genome sequencing projects has produced large amounts of nucleotide and protein sequence data. Traditionally, molecular biology research was carried out entirely at the experimental laboratory bench but 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, and its subsequent storage, interpretation and analysis are entirely computer dependent tasks. However, the molecular biology of an organism is a very complex issue with research being carried out at different levels including the genome, proteome, transcriptome and metabalome levels. Following on from the explosion in volume of genomic data, similar increases in data have been observed in the fields of proteomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics.

The first challenge facing the bioinformatics community today is the intelligent and efficient storage of this mass of data. It is important to provide easy and reliable access to this data. The data itself is meaningless before analysis and the sheer volume present makes it impossible for even a trained biologist to begin to interpret it manually. Therefore, incisive computer tools must be developed to allow the extraction of meaningful biological information.

There are three central biological processes around which bioinformatics tools must be developed:

DNA sequence determines protein sequence

Protein sequence determines protein structure

Protein structure determines protein function

So then where are we using our Bioinformatics skills..??

once we are clear with the basic answers of what and how (u have to plz give a feedback on dat)

I am sure we can pass onto the next level so as to know where exactly do we utilize The Great BIOINFORMATICS:

Post Genomic analysis: The journey is not over yet..and our great fraternity of scientists and researchers are still hungry for more knowledge on genomes & proteomes and bout wats unknown the greatest allay of our research team is a team comprising of people called (bioinformaticians) who constantly thrive on making their works easier for genomics study and the study of the unknown..

phylogentic analyses: This is best explained in the forms of phylograms and cladograms..convenient way of observing the evolution..

visualization, modelling and simulation of metabolic pathways and regulatory networks

software tools: part of this is dealt in form of systems biology as treating the tissue system or organism as a complex circuit or machinery..

protein structure prediction,

data processing, data management,

database searches,

gene expression, expression data analysis,

recognition of genes and regulatory elements..

Why Bioinformatics...??

I am sure that this must be the question you might be thinking,that after cramming these many topics and syllabis wat exactly are we planning to achhieve in Bioinformatics...well then here's the answer for that:

provide new insights into biological function

understand the functioning of living things

to apply the knowledge for "improving the quality of life" (in order to understand and fight against diseases)

databases (design, handling, ...)

gene and genome mapping

analysis of gene expression data

search for gene functions

identification of genetic risk factors

pathways, metabolic and regulatoric networks (modelling, simulation, ...)

structure prediction (protein folding, sequence alignments, homology search, ...)

target identification

drug design (docking studies, HTS, screening tests, ...)

gene therapy....

What exactly is "BIOINFORMATICS"?(2)

In the past scientists(biologists,biotechnologist,chemists) used to rely on real time experiments and practical approach for deriving even minute details of a study,Manuel approach for study always required the scientist to do experiments and take measurements(temp,enzyme,etc) with exact precession even a single error could result in an abortive experimentation and thus wastage of hard work, finance etc...with the advancement of technology we observed an increasing influence of technology in the field of Biotechnology , Molecular biology later Drugs and pharmaceutical industry... This ever increasing influential part of technology involving Molecular biology,BT.This application of Information technology in molecular biology was later termed as BIOINFORMATICS coined by PAULIEN HOEGWEG in 1979..thus the scientist community could easily rely on machine derived calculations and values for deriving experiments making the work less erroneous and low manual workload.

In Vitro work into In Silico work is the main bioinformatics application

What exactly is "BIOINFORMATICS"?

This is supposed to be the first question that shud pop up into every newbies brain but I think we can easily guess out the "literal" meaning as something that is involving BIO+INFORMATICS and can give you a simple answer by writing (BIO+INFORMATICS= BIOINFORMATICS).

In this blog i would like to depict the true works that goes on behind this simple equation...

What we study in bio informatics:

Biotechnology & its applications.

Micro & Molecular biology

Computing languages(C,C++,JAVA,.NET...).
Scripting languages (PERL, Python, Bio-PERL, Bio-RUBY..)

Database management system(DBMS), Relational(RDBMS)..

Sql, My-Sql.

Mathematical Concepts and applications involving integration, calculus, and graph theory..

In short Bioinformatics is the integrated application of all the above mentioned topics into further studies(Advanced study) involving:

GENOMICS

structural genomics

functional genomics

PROTEOMICS

NANOTECHNOLOGY

RECOMBINANT DNA TECHNOLOGY

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (in biological mol. simulations)

GRID COMPUTING for datamanagement

SYSTEMS BIOLOGY

COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY

PHARMACOGENOMICS

PHARMACOGENETICS

BIOPHYSICS

BIOMEDICAL INFORMATICS

MATHEMATICAL BIOLOGY

PHARMACOINFORMATICS

AGROINFORMATICS

In-Silico ADME(Tox) prediction

CHEMINFORMATICS