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Bioinformatics 
Article by M Madan Babu  

Our expansion of Knowledge and Information in life sciences has been enormous in recent years. The major media in the publication of articles has been the print media which include journals, periodicals, annals, newsletters, etc.  

Information on print has always been voluminous and time consuming to search for an article ( since it has to be done manually ). Another problem with printed information is its storage , maintenance and shelf life. Articles can be stored only for a short period of time also accessability and handling becomes difficult.  

Maintaining a database of articles in the printed form is not an easy job, eventhough it is still followed in many places. Nowadays there is an increased need to access broad range of information which generates need to handle all data in a way which can be searched, matched and worked upon easily.  

Tremendous improvements have been made in the field of Computers and electronic data storage. Developments in computing tools to allow the effective use of the information is also being witnessed.  

Bioinformatics is the science of developing computer databases and algorithms for the purpose of speeding up and enhancing biological research.  

A database is a collection of data that is organized so that its contents can easily be accessed, managed, and updated.  

The activity of preparing a database can be divided in to:  

• Collection of data in a form which can be easily accessed
• Making it available to a multi-user system ( always available for the online user)

Databases have search facilities which rapidly gives access to the required article within minutes. 

 The key word has to be typed by the user and the search for that particular string will be made and the results will be presented to the user.  

Over the last few years, more specialised databases have also become available. These include :  

• Genome Interactive Database
• PDB ( Protein Data Bank )
• HGML ( Human Genome Mapping Library )
• EMBL ( European Molecular Biology Lab ) Nucleotide Sequence Database
• ENTREZ Document Retrieval System
• GenBank

 DDBJ ( DNA Data Bank of Japan ), CarBank ( Carbohydrate Structure Database ) EMBL, HDB ( Hybridoma Data Bank ), PDB, PIR ( Protein Identification Resourse ), PDS, SWISSPROT, HGML, GenBank, MIM ( Microbial Strains Database ) and PRFSEQDB ( Protein Research Foundation, SEQuence Data Bank ).  

Up-to-date information on databases can be obtained online from LiMB - Listing of Molecular Biology Databases  

The applications of Bioinformatics centres include:  

• Literature Survey in Life Science
• Database search of Protein and Nucleic acid sequence and Structures
• Identification of primers
• Structure and function prediction of proteins
• Identification of coding regions in DNA sequences

New academic programs are training students in bioinformatics by providing them with backgrounds in molecular biology and in computer science, including database design and analytical approaches.  

Much information that has been captured is not yet available in the databases. The databases themselves are expected to be publicly online and Internet-accessible by the end of 2003. Database information will be analyzed for new information as new algorithms are developed.