Do you have a computer? Its time for Bioinformatics

Ahamed Ismail Hossain

Just imagine a scenario that you are in a hurry to get a new protein 3-D structure or to find out a drug binding site. But you can't neither invest a lot of money to have it nor can't consume huge time. Don't worry, there is a exciting alternative for you. You can produce a protein 3-D structure, identify a drug binding site, find out a specific gene/RNA/protein sequence by writing few program on your computer and gets the result within a very short time that scientists had been trying to discover for years. But you are doing the job just using few programs, tools and software. Do you know the difference between 'Dry lab' & 'Wet lab'? Dry lab helps us to reduce our time consumption, reduces expenditure of million dollars and years long effort in a research project. What I told you to imagine is a part of dry lab. Our traditional laboratories where chemicals, drugs or other materials or biological matters are handled in liquid solutions or volatile phase are called Wet Lab. This type of laboratory allows us hand-on scientific research and experiments. Instead of wet lab, now-a-days scientists are using another type of laboratory which is “Dry Laboratory”. This is the perfect lab for bioinformatics. By definition, ‘a dry lab is a laboratory where computational or applied mathematical analysis are done on a computer generated model to simulate a phenomenon in the physical realm that might be impossible, time or money consuming or too dangerous to observe under normal laboratory condition.’ Often it referred to as ‘in silico’ (as opposed to in vitro) has amassed more attention especially in the area of bioinformatics, as computer power has grown exponentially this approach to research. 

In 1970, Paulien Hogeweg and Ben Hesper coined the term Bioinformatics to refer to the study of information processes in the biotic system. As before we learned ‘Biochemistry, the study of chemical process in biological system’. Many say Bioinformatics is computational biology. Let’s elaborate this term a little bit to understand what actually ‘Bioinformatics’ is. Bioinformatics is a field that has been developing for last thirty years. It is a discipline that represents a marriage between biotechnology and computer technology and has evolved through the convergence of advances in each of these fields. Basically, as an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combines computer science, statistics, mathematics and engineering to study and process biological data. The computer is a mandatory part in bioinformatics as it organizes, link, analyze, and visualize complex sets of biological and genetic information for the different purpose. Discovery of a Gene-based drug is one of the examples of this technology. Also, the necessity of bioinformatics has been precipitated by the exploration of publicly available genome information resulting from ‘The Human Genome Project’.

Now, you may think, what actually we can do with bioinformatics. Well, as a growing field in biological science, it compasses a lot of possibilities. In sequence analysis, it includes- Genome annotation, Computational evolutionary biology, Comparative genomics, Genetics of diseases, Analysis of mutation in cancers. In the area of Gene and Protein expression, it includes- Analysis of gene expression, Analysis of protein expression, Analysis of regulation. It also gives privilege for structural bioinformatics, Molecular interaction networks, Literature analysis, High-throughput image analysis, High-throughput single cell data analysis, Biodiversity informatics etc.

The primary goal of bioinformatics is to increase the understanding of the biological process. What sets it apart from other approaches is its focus on developing and applying a computationally intensive technique to achieve this goal. An example includes- pattern recognition, data mining, machine learning algorithm, and visualization. Major research effort in the field includes sequence alignment, gene finding, genome assembles, drug-design, drug-discovery, protein-structure alignment, protein structure prediction, prediction of gene expression, protein-protein interaction, genome-wide association studies, and the modeling of evolution.

Wow! Can’t you see a lot of excitement here? You can make tools, software using a programming language like ‘Python’, ‘Pearl’ etc. You can sharp your skill by learning bioinformatics and programming through problem-solving in the website www.rosalind.info. Apart from that a lot of resources, journals, article, tutorials, and online courses are available on bioinformatics. As far as I know, in Bangladesh, other than educational institute, bio-bio-1 is the only non-profit voluntary organization made a platform to learn Bioinformatics organized by some professional individuals from biochemistry, molecular biology, mathematics, statistics, microbiology, computer science. Their aim is to spread the excitement of research and development by infecting the like-minded individuals (especially the young one) through several programs. Few educational institutes like the University of Development Alternative include bioinformatics in their curriculum. As a progressive country, Bangladesh demands more focus in bioinformatics because it’s a strong tool in the research field of agriculture, drug discovery, diseases diagnosis etc.

Wow! don't you feel thrilled? So, now it’s your time. If you have a computer and an internet connection, you can start learning bioinformatics. You can be a pioneer. Oh, you need one more thing, Passion. That’s all.