BIF402 Handouts

Variety of definitions Luscombe et al. Method Inform Med 2001; 40:346-58

Bioinformatics is conceptualizing biology in terms of molecules (in the sense of Physical chemistry) and applying “informatics techniques” (derived from disciplines such as applied math, computer science and statistics) to understand and organize the information associated ith th l l l l with these molecules, on a large scale.

Bioinformatics is a management information system for molecular biology and has many practical applications.

I. Organize data in databases - access current data access current data - submit new data II. Develop tools and resources to analyze data III. Interpret data in a biologically useful manner - global analysis of data to uncover common principles that apply across many systems