Why Bioinformatics?: Zoya Khalid Zoya - Khalid@nu - Edu.pk
Why Bioinformatics?: Zoya Khalid Zoya - Khalid@nu - Edu.pk
Why Bioinformatics?: Zoya Khalid Zoya - Khalid@nu - Edu.pk
Zoya Khalid
[email protected]
• Many of the most profound scientific
questions of today are within the realm of
bioinformatics research
• Why ?
– One good reason: structure gives clues about
function. If we can tell the structure, we can
perhaps tell the function
– We can design amino acid sequences that will
fold into proteins that do what we want them
to do. Drug design !!
Many more challenges
• New types of data come due to
technological breakthroughs in biology
• High throughput data carries
unprecedented amount of information
• Too much noise
• Bioinformatics removes the noise and
reveals the truth
Bioinformatics
• Is not about one problem (e.g., designing
better computer chips, better compilers,
better graphics, better networks, better
operating systems, etc.)
• Is about a family of very different
problems, all related to biology, all related
to each other
• How can computers help solve any of this
family of problems ?
Bioinformatics and You
• You can learn and develop new tools of
bioinformatics
• These tools owe their origin to computer
science, information theory, probability
theory, statistics, etc.
• You can learn the language of biology,
enough to understand what the problems
are
• Surprising biological problems convert to
computer science problems naturally