Currently we are experiencing a rapid growth in the Bioinformatics field due to the involvement of multi disciplines as chemistry, informatics, statistics, biochemistry, mathematics, physics, and linguistics. Bioinformatics is the interpretation of the biological data through computer analysis which is used to collect, classify, store the biological information applied to molecular genetics. Bioinformatics is using IT applications to gather bio-medicine data and transform it into different forms. David Lipman, director of NCBI is known as the father of bioinformatics. Bioinformatics is growing gradually with a rapid pace in three directions :
- Management of biological data
- Analysis of biological data
- Modelling of biological data
Whole genome sequencing data is to be analyzed through bioinformatics which includes software development, algorithms, pipeline analysis and database storage etc. It gives structural and functional analysis to facilitate biological processes like :
- Phylogeny
- Drug Designing
- Vaccines
- Identification of organisms
- Automatic Genome Sequencing
- Gene identification
- Gene function
- Analysis of protein structure
Bioinformatics is an application that uses computer science to solve the challenges in medicine and biology. It is helpful in the lock and key hypothesis where a drug molecule binds with a protein. You can prefer the USA, UK, Germany and France for their best bioinformatics applications. To be the Bioinformatician you need to acquire the following skills :
- Programming Skills
- Statistical Skills
- Bioinformatics Skills
- Knowledge of Molecular Biology
- Fundamental Knowledge of Genomics and Genetics
- Database Management
- Data MIning
- Machine Learning
- General Skills
Relation between bioinformatics and programming languages:
If you want to be a successful Bioinformatician you need to explore Programming in R, Python, Linux, statistics and data science. Python is frequently used as a high level programming language in Bioinformatics
- Perl
- JavaScript
- Python
- SQL
- Ruby
- PHP
Software tools involved in Bioinformatics :
In order to discover novel genes we use certain bioinformatics tools for the collection and annotation of genomic data for sequencing. Here are a few software tools used in the sequencing process. The sequencing is done based on the background of metagenomic assembly, phylogenetic analysis and metagene prediction. There are various tools involved for this purpose like BLAST, FASTA and Ensembl
- NetSurfP – Prediction of protein surface and secondary structures
- NetTurnP – Predict B-turn regions in protein Sequence
- MODELLER – Used for modelling 3-D structure of protein in comparative and homology studies
- AutoDock – Used as automated docking tools
- Gromacs – Designed for protein and lipids
- OrfPredictor – Used to predict cDNA sequences and ORF prediction
Popular Linux OS distributions
- Ubuntu
- Gentoo Linux
- Fedora
- BioLinux
With the help of computerized software in bioinformatics we are all set to design computational algorithms which help us to update and retrieve components data stored in biological database systems. For accelerating research in the area of biotechnology there are a number of applications available nowadays.