Bioinformatics or computational biology is the use of mathematical, information

technology, statistics and genetics to solve biological problems using nucleotide (DNA,
RNA) or amino acid (protein) sequences and related information by creating or using
computer programs or mathematical models or both. Even though the three terms
Bioinformatics, computational biology and bioinformation infrastructure are often times
used interchangeably, broadly, the three terms may be defined as follows:
Bioinformatics is the research, development or application of computational
tools and approaches for expanding the use of biological, medical, behavioral or
health data including those to acquire, store, organize, archive, analyze or
visualize such data. It refers to database-like activities, involving persistent set of
data that are maintained in a consistent state over essentially indefinite periods
of time.
Computational biology encompasses the use of algorithmic tools to facilitate
biological analyses.
Bioinformation infrastructure comprises the entire collection of information
management systems, analysis tools and communication networks supporting
biology. Thus, the latter may be viewed as a computational scaffold of the former
two.
The area of bioinformatics is
Data mining and analysis of the data gathered by various genome projects
Sequence alignment
Protein structure prediction
Protein- protein interaction
Systems biology and virtual evolution
There are other fields, for example, medical imaging/image analysis, genetic
algorithms, artificial intelligence and neural networks {neural networks inspired by
crude models of the functioning of nerve cells in the brain, are used to predict,
surprisingly accurately, the secondary structure of proteins from their primary
sequences}, which might be considered a part of bioinformatics.
The fields related to bioinformatics
Bioinformatics has various applications in research, medicine, technology, agriculture,
etc., following research fields has integral component of bioinformatics.
Computational biology the development and application of data analytical and
theoretical methods, mathematical modelling and computational simulation
techniques to the study of biological, behavioural and social systems.
Genomics
To analyse or compare the entire genetic complement of a species or species
(plural)
To Compare genomes by comparing more or less representative subsets of
genes within genomes
Proteomics (study of proteome) is the study of protein their location, structure
and function. It is the identification, characterization and quantification of all proteins
involved in a particular pathway, organelle, cell, tissue, organ or organism that can be
studied in concert to provide accurate and comprehensive data about that system.
Proteomics now evokes not only all the proteins in any given cell but also the set of
all protein isoforms and modifications, the interactions between them, the structural
descriptions of proteins and their higher order complexes, and for that matter almost
everything post-genome.
Pharmacogenomics is the study of how genes affect a persons response to drugs.
These genetic differences will be used to predict whether a medication will be effective
for a particular person and to help prevent adverse drug reactions. It is also an
application of genomics to identify drug targets.
Pharmacogenetics - refers to how variation in one single gene influences the response
to a single drug. All individuals respond differently to drug treatments, some positively: