next up previous
Next: The present situation at Up: What is Bioinformatics? Previous: Caveat

Bioinformatics extends beyond sequence data and genomics

Although sequence-oriented bioinformatics is the most mature, and to date the most successful, subarea of bioinformatics, the same paradigm can and will be extended to other types of biological data. Among others, this includes protein structure data, protein-protein interaction data, protein-DNA interaction data, data on enzymatic and biochemical pathways, webs of neurological structures and pathways, population-scale data, large-scale gene expression data, ecological and environmental data, and even satellite data of plant growth integrated with large-scale weather and soil data. Ultimately, bioinformatics and computational biology will have the greatest impact in the area of ``systems biology", the integration of relevant biological data at many levels of observation, and the response of the system to changes in the data. Leroy Hood spoke on systems biology during his recent visit and stressed the importance and complexity of systems-level biology.

The growth of bioinformatics and computational biology is just beginning. Many pharmaceutical and bio-technology companies are developing computational molecular biology and informatics groups. Some educational programs have been developed, but there are only a few institutions that have developed a concentrated strength in bioinformatics and computational molecular biology.

The challenge to biology is to more fully exploit the available large-scale biological data and computations that one can efficiently do on that data, to make important biological discoveries. The challenge to bioinformatics and computational molecular biology is to develop efficient methods and systems to facilitate those discoveries.

In this FTE initiative, we should not narrowly concentrate on just the subareas of bioinformatics that have already proven invaluable, but over the next several years should also invest in the larger, future-oriented growth areas in bioinformatics, particularly systems biology.


next up previous
Next: The present situation at Up: What is Bioinformatics? Previous: Caveat
Dan Gusfield
1999-11-03