Dr. Ghazala Shaheen

Text Book of Bioinformatics: Introduction to Bioinformatics Dr. Ghazala Shaheen

Bioinformatics is the application of statistics andcomputer science to the field of molecularbiology. The term bioinformatics was coined by PaulienHogeweg and Ben Hesper in 1978 for the study ofinformatic processes in biotic systems. Its primaryuse since at least the late 1980s has been ingenomics and genetics, particularly in those areas ofgenomics involving large-scale DNAsequencing. Bioinformatics now entails the creationand advancement of databases, algorithms,computational and statistical techniques and theoryto solve formal and practical problems arising fromthe management and analysis of biological data. Overthe past few decades rapid developments in genomicand other molecular research technologies anddevelopments in information technologies havecombined to produce a tremendous amount ofinformation related to molecular biology. It is thename given to these mathematical and computingapproaches used to glean understanding of biologicalprocesses. Common activities in bioinformatics includemapping and analyzing DNA and protein sequences,aligning different DNA and protein sequences tocompare them and creating and viewing 3-D models ofprotein structures.