What is bioinformatics?
Bioinformatics applies methods from computer science to scientific problems from the life sciences and has developed into an independent sub-discipline over the last few decades as a linking discipline between computer science and the life sciences. High-throughput experiments have found their way into many areas of chemistry, biology, medicine and pharmacology and provide a large amount of complex data in the areas of genome sequencing, protein expression profiles, protein structure elucidation and interactions between biomolecules (proteins, RNA, low-molecular compounds). Bioinformatics develops software tools for preparing, evaluating and analyzing this data. It therefore plays a key role in the modern life sciences, as only with sophisticated computer systems can knowledge be generated from large amounts of data and made usable for the prediction of biological phenomena. The Bioinformatics Division (FaBI) has defined the following definition of bioinformatics as the basis of its work: “Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary science. We understand bioinformatics as the research, development and application of computer-aided methods to answer questions in molecular biology and biomedicine. The focus is on models and algorithms for data at the molecular and cell biological level, for example for
- Genomes and genes,
- gene and protein expression and regulation,
- metabolic and regulatory pathways and networks,
- structures of biomacromolecules, in particular DNA, RNA and proteins,
molecular interactions between biomacromolecules and between biomacromolecules and other substances such as substrates, transmitters, messengers and inhibitors, and - the molecular characterization of ecosystems.”