Bioinformatics
is the combination of biology and information technology. The discipline
encompasses any computational tools and methods used to manage, analyze and
manipulate large sets of biological data. Essentially, bioinformatics has three
components:
1. The
creation of databases allowing the storage and management of large biological
data sets.
2. The development of algorithms and statistics
to determine relationships among members of large data sets.
3. The
use of these tools for the analysis and interpretation of various types of
biological data, including DNA, RNA and protein sequences, protein structures,
gene expression profiles, and biochemicalpathways.