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Bioinformatics is an emerging branch of biological science that emerged as a result of the combination of biology and information technology. It is a multidisciplinary subject where information technology is incorporated by means of various computational and analytical tools for the interpretation of biological data. It is a combination of various areas including Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science. Bioinformatics is about developing new technologies and software tools in the fields of medicine, biological research, and biotechnology. The major scope and application of bioinformatics are:
- To understand the function of genes
- Cell organizations and function
- Analysis of drug targets
- Examine the characteristics of various diseases
- Integration and development of various tools for the management of biological databases.
Check out: MCQ on Bioinformatics
Key Takeaways: Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Genetics, Genome, Bioinformatics applications, Molecular Modeling, Pathway analysis, Gene Therapy, Crop Management, Bioinformatics Scope,
What is Bioinformatics?
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Bioinformatics is a subject that is a combination of biology and technology. It requires complete knowledge of engineering as well as life sciences. This sector draws from a well of biological data and uses this information to create new tools and software which will be possible in the area of biological research. Bioinformatics is subdivided into two sections, namely,
- Animal bioinformatics
- Plant bioinformatics
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Applications of Bioinformatics
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Bioinformatics and its application depend on taking out useful facts and figures from a collection of data reserved to be processed into useful information. Bioinformatics focuses its scope on the areas of 3D image processing, 3D modeling of living cells, image analysis, drug development, and a lot more. The most important application of bioinformatics can be seen in the field of medicine, where its data is used to create antidotes for infectious and harmful diseases.
The main applications of bioinformatics is to make the complete use of natural processes more usable and less complicated.
Some examples of the application of bioinformatics are as follows –
- Bioinformatics is largely used in gene therapy.
- This branch finds application in evolutionary concepts.
- Microbial analysis and computing.
- Understanding protein structure and modeling.
- Storage and retrieval of biotechnological data.
- In the finding of new drugs.
- In agriculture to understand crop patterns, pest control, and crop management.
Applications of Bioinformatics
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Bioinformatics Subfields & Related Disciplines
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The area of bioinformatics incorporates a wide range of biotechnological sub-disciplines that are highlighted by both scientific ethics based on biological sciences and deep knowledge of computer science and information technology. Bioinformatics will grow in scope and utility. Some of the examples of many fields of bioinformatics include:
- Computational biology: The uses of data-based solutions to the issues in bioinformatics.
- Genetics: It is the study of heredity and the gene diversity of inherited characteristics/features.
- Genomics: It is the branch of biomolecular biology that works in the area of structure, function, evolution, and mapping of genomes.
- Proteomics: The study of proteomes and their features.
- Metagenomics: The study of genetics from the environment and living beings and samples.
- Transcriptomics: It is the study of the complete RNA and DNA transcriptase.
- Phylogenetics: The study of the relationships between groups of animals and humans.
- Metabolomics: The study of the biochemistry of metabolism and metabolites in living beings.
- Systems biology: Mathematical designing and analysis and visualization of large sets of biodata.
- Structural analysis: Modeling that determines the effects of physical loads on physical structures.
- Molecular modeling: The designing and defining of molecular structures by way of computational chemistry.
- Pathway analysis: A software description that defines related proteins in the metabolism of the body.
Disciplines of Bioinformatics
Scope of Bioinformatics
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The main scope of Bioinformatics is to fetch all the relevant data and process it into useful information. It also deals with –
- Management and analysis of a wide set of biological data.
- It is specially used in human genome sequencing where large sets of data are being handled.
- Bioinformatics plays a major role in the research and development of the biomedical field.
- Bioinformatics uses computational coding for several applications that involve finding gene and protein functions and sequences, developing evolutionary relationships, and analyzing the three-dimensional shapes of proteins.
- Research works based on genetic disease and microbial disease entirely depend on bioinformatics, where the derived information can be vital to produce personalised medicines.
Scope of Bioinformatics
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Uses of Bioinformatics
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Bioinformatics is used in various fields, especially in biomedicine where it has various applications.
- Drug discovery: By the use of structure-based drug design with Bioinformatics, scientists can come up with effective drugs for various illnesses and acute diseases.
- Personalized medicine: By assessing the genetic structure of the patient and their respective medical history, personalized medicine can be curated which would prove to be much more effective.
- Preventive medicines: This is majorly done by integrating data from Bioinformatics, Bioanalytics, and Epidemiology. As the name says, preventive medicines can prevent a chain of transmission of diseases or mitigate any acute disease before its onset.
- Gene therapy: Gene therapy is the process where defective genes are replaced by new ones in the gene structure of a living organism. Since each organisms gene structure is very different, huge data may be involved to produce an accurate replacement.
Also Read: NCERT Solutions for Class 12 Biology Molecular Basis of Inheritance
Things to Remember
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- Bioinformatics avail central, globally accessible databases that allow scientists to submit, search and analyze the information provided to them.
- Bioinformatics is very important for the analysis of data in modern biology and medicine.
- The main scope of Bioinformatics is to integrate all the relevant data and process it into useful information.
- Bioinformatics is largely used in gene therapy.
- Bioinformatics is a field that is a very important part of research and development.
- Bioinformatics finds its application in the areas of 3D image processing, 3D modeling of living cells, image analyzing, drug development
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| Important Topics Related to the Chapter | ||
|---|---|---|
| DNA Genetic Material | Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic Transcription | Why is DNA negatively charged? |
| Structure of RNA | DNA replication | Model Organism |
| DNA packaging | Translation | DNA Polymerases |
Previous Year Questions
- Ratio of complementary genes is… [NEET 2001]
- Which form of RNA has a structure resembling clover leaf… [NEET 2004]
- Which RNA is short lived… [COMEDK UGET 2006]
- Who discovered transduction in bacteria?… [COMEDK UGET 2011]
- VNTR stands for… [COMEDK UGET 2006]
- Human genome project was officially started in… [COMEDK UGET 2011]
- Franklin Conrat demonstrated that RNA is the genetic material of… [COMEDK UGET 2007]
- DNA replication is semi-conservative because... [COMEDK UGET 2008]
- DNA packaging in eukaryotes is done by formation of… [CUCET 2011]
- A terminator codon which is called amber is… [COMEDK UGET 2011]
- Clover leaf model of tRNA was suggested by… [JKCET 2010]
- Histone octamer contains… [JKCET 2011]
- Heterogeneous nuclear RNA is converted to… [AMUEEE 2014]
- Who gave semi-conservative mode of DNA replication… [JKCET 2014]
- Adjacent nucleotides are joined by a… [AMUEEE 2015]
- The successive nucleotides of RNA are….[JIPMER 2001]
- When the centromere of a chromosome is located…
- The back bone of RNA consists of…
- When the centromere of a chromosome is…
- Purines found both in DNA and RNA...[NEET 2019]
Sample Questions
Ques 1. What is conserved sequence? (2 marks)
Ans. Conserved sequence is a sequence that present in the protein or DNA and which is consistent across species or remains unchanged within the species over its evolutionary changes.
Ques 2. What are examples of bioinformatics? (2 marks)
Ans. An example of bioinformatics is the use of computer analysis on the Human Genome Project, which has recorded the three billion base pairs of the human DNA system. The use of computer science, mathematics, and information theory to organize and analyze complex biological data, especially genetic data.
Ques 3. Is maths used in bioinformatics? (2 marks)
Ans. Math is useful if you want to be on the side of bioinformatics that is innovating. Understanding math (even if you can't come up with novel maths) is also fundamental for choosing which method to use if you are on the applications side of things too.
Ques 4. What are the Applications of Bioinformatics? (2 marks)
Ans. Bioinformatics is applied in various areas like molecular medicine, personalized medicine, preventative medicine, gene therapy, drug development, waste cleanup, climate change studies, alternative energy sources, biotechnology, antibiotic resistance, forensic analysis of microbes, bio-weapon creation, and crop improvement.
Ques 5. What is the role of Bioinformatics in genome sequencing? (2 marks)
Ans. As genome sequencing is a process that handles a humongous amount of data, Bioinformatics plays the role of collecting, storing, analysing, assessing, retrieving, and processing these raw data for the purpose of deriving useful information.
Ques 6. What is Gene Therapy? (2 marks)
Ans. Gene Therapy is the process of replacing defective genes with new ones. In the gene structure, all information about the organism right from hair color to blood type is stored in the genetic code. If certain genes don’t work properly, this might result in the diagnosis of a new genetic disease. To prevent this formation of genetic disease, Gene Therapy is implemented.
Ques 7. How can Bioinformatics help in Precision Medicine development? (2 marks)
Ans. Precision medicine is the process whereby studying the genetic code of the organism, the exact factors for the diseases and illnesses are analyzed. This information is then used to develop a medicine that is would cure the targetted disease without causing any side effects.
Ques 8. Which are the main sub-disciplines of bioinformatics? (3 marks)
Ans. There are 3 main disciplines of bioinformatics:
- To form new algorithms and statical methods that can be used to access relationships among the information present in large databases.
- To interpret analyze and interpret different types of information including nucleic acid and amino acid sequences with protein structures and protein domains.
- To develop new tools related to computer enabling efficient access and management of different types of biological information.
Ques 9. What is medical-informatics? (2 marks)
Ans. Medical-informatics is field used by the physicians to analyse and manage the clinical information in a hospital database.
Ques 10. Which types of problems related to biological data are dealt in the field of bioinformatics? (3 marks)
Ans. Bioinformatics mainly deals with development of tools related to data analysis, molecular modelling of different biological macromolecules in two dimensional and three dimensional structures, metabolic pathways, in pharmaceutical industries in order to develop new drug molecules, peptide vaccines, proteins etc.
Ques 11. What is data mining? (1 mark)
Ans. Data mining refers to the process of discovery and retrieving of the required data from various databases.
Ques 12. What is integrative bioinformatics? (1 mark)
Ans. Integrative bioinformatics is the study of informative processes in the biotic systems.
Ques 13. Define database. (1 mark)
Ans. Database is the combination of similar type of information or files that are collectively known as database.
Ques 14. What is interoperability? (1 mark)
Ans. The ability of different computer platforms, networks, operating systems and applications to work together effectively, without any prior communication to exchange the information in a useful and meaningful manner is called interoperability.
Ques 15. What is consensus sequence? (1 mark)
Ans. The most commonly occurring amino acid at each position of an aligned protein series or polynucleotide is called consensus sequence
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