“Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that develops and applies computational methods to analyse large collections of biological data, such as genetic sequences, cell populations or protein samples, to make new predictions or discover new biology. The computational methods used include analytical methods, mathematical modelling and simulation.”
The term bioinformatics was coined by Paulien Hogeweg and Ben Hesper to describe “the study of informatic processes in biotic systems” and it found early use when the first biological sequence data began to be shared. Whilst the initial analysis methods are still fundamental to many large-scale experiments in the molecular life sciences, nowadays bioinformatics is considered to be a much broader discipline, encompassing modelling and image analysis in addition to the classical methods used for comparison of linear sequences or three-dimensional structure.
Lecture and Reading
Reading 1: Luscombe et al., 2001
Reading 2: Attwood 2000
Reading 3: Smith 2018