Short lecture on basic in Bioinformatics

I'm attending a MSMBB post-conference workshop right now. Prof. Shoba just gave a brief lecture on basics in Bioinformatics. I'll just post a quick note with my own opinion added.

Bioinformatics is the application of computational methods in system biology. Bioinformatician deals mainly with protein and DNA sequences. The sequences are treated as linear sequences. It means that the backbone of the DNA or protein is ignored and only residues are important. They also have to deal with 3D structures using specific software. Bioinformatics helps biologist to understand a biological process and shorten the time of lab work. Therefore, they also spend a lot of time communicating with biologists and reading about the subject.

Let's take a look at the history of bioinformatics that is focused mainly on DNA sequences. In 1980, bioinformatics projects were initiated to look at protein structures. When Sanger sequencing was introduced, more works are carried out in analyzing DNA sequences. In 1990, the Human Genome Sequencing project was announced and was completed in 2000. Everyone was very excited about the sequences. That was when what people call the "false dawn of bioinformatics era". The real dawn of bioinformatics came when the Next Generation Sequencing was introduced in 2005. Subsequently to be replaced by 3rd Generation Sequencing. Expertise in these fields are highly sought after in the market.

Careers in Bioinformatics

Genomics:

• Genome sequencing
• Comparative genomics
• annotation and mapping
• gene discovery

Pharmacogenomics:

• SNPs
  
• therapeutic target recognition
  
• pathway effects
  
• drug and expression effects

Proteomics:

• proteomics
• protein profiling
• alternate splice
• structural genomics
• drug and vaccine design