Bioinformatics and Role of Software Engineers in It

Bioinformatics and Role of Software Engineers in It

Abstract:

Bioinformatics is the application of computers in biological sciences. It is concerned with capturing, storing, graphically displaying, modeling and ultimately distributing biological information. It is becoming an essential tool in molecular biology as genome projects generate vast quantities of data.

The Human Genome Project has created the need for new kinds of scientific specialists who can be creative at the interface of biology and other disciplines, such as computer science, engineering, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and the social sciences. As the popularity of genomic research increases, the demand for these specialists greatly exceeds the supply. In the past, the genome project has benefited immensely from the talents of non-biological scientists, and their participation in the future is likely to be even more crucial. Through this report I have tried to analyze the future requirements in development of advances technologies in this field and what role, we, as software engineers can play in development of these technologies.

Introduction to Bioinformatics:

What is Bioinformatics?:

Bioinformatics is the application of computers in biological sciences and especially analysis of biological sequence data. It is concerned with capturing, storing, graphically displaying, modeling and ultimately distributing biological information. It is becoming an essential tool in molecular biology as genome projects generate vast quantities of data. With new sequences being added to DNA databases on an average, once every minute, there is a pressing need to convert this information into biochemical and biophysical knowledge by deciphering the structural, functional and evolutionary clues encoded in the language of biological sequences.

What Bioinformatics therefore offers to the researcher, the entrepreneur, or the Venture Capitalist is an enormous and exciting array of opportunities to discover how living systems metabolise, grow, combat disease, reproduce and regenerate. The current knowledge represents only the tip of the iceberg. Exciting and startling discoveries are being made everyday through Bioinformatics, which is building up an extensive encyclopedia from which life’s mysteries will be unraveled. The importance of computational science in collating this information and its simultaneous interpretation by biologists is the underlying ethos of Bioinformatics.

Having an interest in biology and having a strong inclination towards genetics is all right. But from our point of view, the most important thing is that biocomputing requires lots of software professionals. And there is more to do for these people than the experts in biology.

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