Dr. Md. Monirul Islam:Bioinformatics is a new and growing field that combines the power of computers, mathematical algorithms, and statistics with principles from the life sciences to solve biological problems. It is a developing multidisciplinary field of science and technology that addresses biological data collecting and warehousing, data mining, database searches, analysis and interpretation, modelling, and product designing.
The main uses of bioinformatics include:
• Bioinformatics plays a vital role in the areas of structural genomics, functional genomics, and nutritional genomics.
• It covers emerging scientific research and the exploration of proteomes from the overall level of intracellular protein composition (protein profiles), protein structure, protein-protein interaction, and unique activity patterns (e.g. post-translational modifications).
• Bioinformatics is used for transcriptome analysis where mRNA expression levels can be determined.
• Bioinformatics is used to identify and structurally modify a natural product, to design a compound with the desired properties and to assess its therapeutic effects, theoretically.
• Cheminformatics analysis includes analyses such as similarity searching, clustering, QSAR modelling, virtual screening, etc.
• Bioinformatics is playing an increasingly important role in almost all aspects of drug discovery and drug development.
• Bioinformatics tools are very effective in the prediction, analysis and interpretation of clinical and preclinical findings.
Bioinformatics plays a significant role in the development of the agricultural sector, agro-based industries, agricultural by-product utilization, and better management of the environment. With the increase in sequencing projects, bioinformatics continues to make considerable progress in biology by providing scientists with access to genomic information. It is believed that we will take on another giant leap in the bioinformatics field in the next decade, where computational models of systems-wide properties could serve as the basis for experimentation and discovery.
Writer:Senior Scientist, ASRBC, ACI Seed
