Bioinformatics - A Basic Perspective of the Field

23-Aug-2021

Moringa genus has 13 species belonging to the monogeneric Moringaceae family. Among these species, Moringa oleifera (drumBioinformatics is playing a very important role in the biological research. It has changed and revolutionized the way research is done. It has provided more efficient way of doing research in the area of therapeutics , drug development, proteomics and genomics. Regardless of how precisely it has increased application in the field of Biological research, people know very less about the area, its increasing scope and future prospects.

The field has two practitioners-Bioinformatists and Bioinformaticians. The Bioinformatists is a skilled person who develops software, tools, interfaces for practical use of these tools with a pure knowledge of their usage, on the other hand, a Bioinformaticians is an expert person with knowledge of the application of these tools and software without a deeper understanding of their workflows. So both are important in their own way.

Bioinformatics is not just about pushing buttons , instead Bioinformaticians have to keep in mind each and every detail before performing any experiment or run the software. Any software may have enormous settings required and that all depends on the understanding of the working of software and biological data, which they have to understand in detail before starting any kind of analysis because these parameters affect the final results. So the thought that anybody can do it is a myth. Molecular dynamics study, docking , simulations, genome analysis are an important aspects and area of study in bioinformatics, but it is not just that . It is beyond that, with ,the understanding of the biology of the molecule worked upon, its activities, behaviour and which algorithm will be apt to work on it and finally get the best results for analysis.

Bioinformatics is all about hypothesis based on which we make predictions and generate probabilistic results, similar to the cases in any other field of science. Thus this area is one of the most required and evolving area, as we have enormous amount of genomic data available, but need skilled Bioinformatists and Bioinformaticians to develop algorithms for them and analyse the hidden information stored in the generated data.

By:
Dr. Nidhi Mathur

Amity University Rajasthan