Bioinformatics Approach in Biological Sciences: History and Uses

Abstract

Biological data is any data that can be obtained from living organisms and their products. These data are complex and difficult to analyze and link. Thus, the term bioinformatics emerged. Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary scientific approach that combines biological sciences with computer and information technology to collect, organize, store, analyze, and interpret all types of biological data. Bioinformatics has gone through many developments over the past decades, from the 1950s through the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, developing one-letter amino acid code in the 1960s, discovering the first dynamic programming algorithm and developing different sequencing methods in the 1970s, developing multiple sequence alignment algorithms in the 1980s, and publishing the Human Genome Project in the 1990s. In these recent years, bioinformatics has become a specialization for researchers to be specialized, called bioinformaticians. This approach plays a number of important roles in various sciences. However, in biology, it contributes to different areas, especially the fields of -omics, notably: genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, transcriptomics, interactomics, lipidomics, mechanomics, microbiomics, and other -omics. The bioinformatics approach also involves not only creating and maintaining biological databases but also developing computer tools and software for the analysis of these biological databases. Finally, the use of bioinformatics has different advantages and also some limitations which could be addressed in the future by integrating more biological data, different bioinformatics methods, and integrating artificial intelligence with bioinformatics.