What is Bioinformatics ?
Bioinformatics is a science which uses computational techniques to analyze the biological problems;the science of developing and utilizing computer databases and algorithms to accelerate and enhance biological research.
Bioinformatics is much more than what this definition says, its commonly referred as dry lab work which accelerates the wet lab work drastically. How bioinformatics emerged ?
Bioinformatics recently became the BUZZ word, after the human genome was deciphered in Feb 2001.
But it all started way back in 1960's when the first bioinformatics database was created by Dayhoff.
So here is a list of major events in bioinformatics over the last several decades.
1965 Margaret Dayhoff's Atlas of Protein Sequences
1970 Needleman-Wunsch algorithm
1977 DNA sequencing and software to analyze it (Staden)
1981 Smith-Waterman algorithm developed
1981 The concept of a sequence motif (Doolittle)
1982 GenBank Release 3 made public
1982 Phage lambda genome sequenced
1983 Sequence database searching algorithm (Wilbur-Lipman)
1985 FASTP/FASTN: fast sequence similarity searching
1988 National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) created at NIH/NLM
1988 EMBnet network for database distribution
1990 BLAST: fast sequence similarity searching
1991 EST: expressed sequence tag sequencing
1993 Sanger Centre, Hinxton, UK
1994 EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, UK
1995 First bacterial genomes completely sequenced
1996 Yeast genome completely sequenced
1997 PSI-BLAST
1998 Worm (multicellular) genome completely sequenced
1999 Fly genome completely sequenced
2000 The genome for Pseudomonas aeruginosa (6.3 Mbp) is published.
2000 The A. thaliana genome (100 Mb) is sequenced.
2001 The human genome (3 Giga base pairs) is published.
S.SUGUNA DEVI
Research Executive
Orchid Chemicals & Pharmaceutical Pvt. ltd
Scholinganallur
Chennai
