Bioinformatics uses advances in the areas of computer science and information technology to solve complex problems in life sciences and particularly in biotechnology. In the past decades the field of genomics, and more recently, proteomics have matured to the point where research methodologies have grown in reliability and sophistication while the cost per analyses have dropped.
The challenges that technology addresses involve the mining, analysis, visualization, and storing of immense amount of data being generated by these analyses.
The potentials of Bioinformatics in identifying useful genes leading to the discovery and development of new drugs has led to the field becoming more and more computationally intensive. Genomics has revolutionizes drug development, gene therapy and our entire approach to health care and human medicine.
Fundamental Problems in Bioinformatics:
- Pairwise Sequence Alignment
- Multiple Sequence Alignment
- Phylogenetic Analysis
- Sequence Based Database Searches
- Gene Prediction
- Structure Prediction (RNA and Protein)
- Protein Classification
- Gene Expression