Is this true today ? Not a bit, not even as much as a bacteria. It seems imminent, if not already true, that Biology and Computers are becoming close cousins which are mutually respecting, helping and influencing each other and synergistically merging, more than ever. The flood of data from Biology, mainly in the form of DNA, RNA and Protein sequences, is putting heavy demand on computers and computational scientists. At the same time, it is demanding a transformation of basic ethos of biological sciences. A common misconception is that bio-informatics is about creating and managing bio-data bases. Nothing would be farther from the truth. Fine analytical and engineering skills are in great demand in the area, as seen by vigorous attempts of machine-learning on the protein folding and gene-finding problems. The great Donald Kunth, renowned Stanford computer science professor, is quoted often for pointing out that biology has 500 years of exciting problems to work on. He feels that biology is "so digital, and incredibly complicated, but incredibly useful"(Computer Literacy Interview with Donald Knuth by Dan Doernberg, December 1993). However, there are still some spokes in the wheel for the grand union between two great sciences and their offshoot technologies. Due to the estrangement which existed for many decades, professionals from both the fields have a lot to do in terms of fine tuning their communication. Skepticism from puritans in both fields towards the claim of Bioinformatics as an independent field also needs convincing answers.
Many universities world over have started teaching and research in the area. Journals are plenty and so are conferences and professional meetings. As the disciplines of bioinformatics and computational biology are gaining prominence day by day, an industry is also emerging fast on their shoulders, estimated at $1.82 billion in 2007. Bioinformatics has taken on a new glitter by entering the field of drug discovery in a big way. Bioinformatics has taken on a new glitter by entering the field of drug discovery in a big way. This is one area that seems to be becoming the single largest. bioinformatics application, from an Industry view point. In India, it has a special relevance in the context of the recent patent amendment that has brought in product patents.
There has been a green-shift in all prominent technology publications. IEEE, the world's biggest professional society of technologists, has prominently adopted such a shift. I did a quick check. If you use the key word "biology" and search the IEEE Digital Library limiting the year of search, you get the following hits for the years indicated in brackets: 13 (1975), 40(1985), 3484 (1990), 9617 (1995), 16233 (2000) and 27526 (2006). I did this on 26 November 2006, among the 14,32,467 documents in the data base. About 2% documents have been greened! One of the latest additions to the prestigious IEEE Transactions series is IEEE & ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. It may be noted that biological motivation has a long history in the computer field, in the form of artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, to the recent ant-colony optimization techniques. Applications of computers in biology were mostly in the bio-medical field, in early days. One new facet that has emerged with Bioinformatics, is the focus on sub-cellular and molecular levels of Biology. Systems biology promises great growth in modeling cellular life, using conventional engineering approach, as already pointed to by projects such as e-Cell.
I will attempt to give the big picture of Bioinformatics by presenting basic ideas in minimal technical vocabulary, aimed specifically at IT community. I do not have anything against life scientists attempting to read this and I think it could be useful in patches to them also. They are however likely to be uncomfortable with my bio-wisdom.
Bioinformatics is the application of computer sciences and allied technologies to answer the questions of Biologists, about the mysteries of life. A mere application of computers to solve any problem of a biologist would not merit a separate discipline. It looks as if Bioinformatics is mainly concerned with problems involving data emerging from within cells of living beings. It might be appropriate to say that Bioinformatics deal with application of computers in solving problems of molecular biology, in this context.
What is difference between Bioinformatics and Computational Biology ? This is a bit tricky. Both are "Computers + Biology". Difference is subtle but important. Bioinformatics = Biology + Computers whereas Computational Biology = Computers + Biology. In other words, biologists who specialize in use of computational tools and systems to answer problems of biology are bioinformaticians. Computer scientists, Mathematicians, Statisticians, and Engineers who specialize in developing theories, algorithms and techniques for such tools and systems are computational biologists. Arguably, there will be overlaps, but one can also identify some clear demarcations. I am yet to find a biologist who is at absolute ease in understanding, let alone developing a hidden Markov model, which is a machine learning paradigm used extensively in Bioinformatics.
What is difference between Bioinformatics and Computational Biology ? This is a bit tricky. Both are "Computers + Biology". Difference is subtle but important. Bioinformatics = Biology + Computers whereas Computational Biology = Computers + Biology. In other words, biologists who specialize in use of computational tools and systems to answer problems of biology are bioinformaticians. Computer scientists, Mathematicians, Statisticians, and Engineers who specialize in developing theories, algorithms and techniques for such tools and systems are computational biologists. Arguably, there will be overlaps, but one can also identify some clear demarcations. I am yet to find a biologist who is at absolute ease in understanding, let alone developing a hidden Markov model, which is a machine learning paradigm used extensively in Bioinformatics.
