Bioinformatics

From Carls wiki

Image:Etch-a-sketch-dna-small.png

A cross-disciplinary area of study, where biology, mathematics and computer science meet.

What is bioinformatics?

(Copied from IBG's site)

Advances in technologies such as DNA sequencing have resulted in a huge increase in the quantities of data to be handled. Data from other sources, such as population genetics, statistics, gene expression analysis, imaging, and protein identification projects, are also accumulating in various databases.

To extract and analyse data from these enormous digital libraries, special knowledge and skills are required. A bioinformatics engineer has this expertise and is able to use a range of techniques and methodologies to store, extract, organize, analyse, interpret and utilize information from biological sequences and molecules. Bioinformatics offers new and endless possibilities within a number of fields, from phylogenetic construction of taxonomic trees to the design of advanced pharmaceuticals and proteins.

So, in short, what is it, really?

It's about picking up some problem in biology that was too hard to solve only a decade ago, walking with it into the fields of mathematics and comp-sci, tinkering around with it for a while, and coming back out with a solution that makes sense to biologists.

It's also about being able to talk both to biologists and computer scientists, thus acting as a mediator.