Bioinformatics is the application of IT in biotechnology (BT) for data storage and analyzing DNA sequences. In Bioinformatics, the knowledge of various branches is needed like biology, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, & laws of physics, and certainly sound knowledge of IT field to analyze biotech data. It is not only limited to computing data, but also in fact it can be applied to solve various biological issues and discover how living organisms works.

Bioinformatics has actually change the method that researchers and scientists can study the DNA sequences and genetic material in organisms and how scientists have been able to accumulate, store and keep this important data and information into a safe database that they are able to reference upon any new result and continually add to. Then what is this innovative field of science actually about? It is really a compilation and combination of different branches of biology, computational mathematics, information technology, and computer science.

Bioinformatics is a comparatively new division of science that has evolved and emerged to compensate for lack of better techniques to analyze and store important data. Before the beginning of bioinformatics, researchers and scientists had to use processes of manual examination and create procedures to note and denote alterations in different protein sequences between many organisms and protein sequences of DNA.

Several aspects of applications are being briefly discussed here:

1. Gene therapy

In the near future, the possibility for using genes it selves to treat disease may develop into a reality. The gene therapy is an approach used to prevent, treat or cure disease by modifying the appearance of a person's genes. At present, this area is in its immature stage with medical trials for several different kinds of cancer and some other diseases enduring.

2. Molecular medicine

Human genome will have great effects on the areas of clinical medicine and biomedical research. Every disease or illness has a genetic factor. This may be inherited or an outcome of the body's reacts to an environmental stress that causes changes in the genome (eg. heart disease, diabetes, cancers etc.).

The completion of human genome indicates that we can look for the genes straightforwardly associated with various diseases and start to understand the molecular base of these diseases more obviously. This new understanding of the molecular means of disease will enable cures, better treatments and even preventive tests to be built up.

3. The reality of biological weapon creation

Scientists have currently built the virus poliomyelitis applying totally artificial means. They performed this using material from mail-order chemical supply and genomic information available on Internet. The study was sponsored by US Department of Defence as the part of biowarfare response program to establish to the world the authenticity of bioweapons.

4. Drug targets

Currently, all drugs on market mark about 500 proteins only. With a better understanding of the mechanisms of disease and using computational instruments to recognize and validate new medicine targets, more specific drugs that work on the reason, not only the signs, of the disease or syndrome can be developed. Those highly specific drugs assure to have less side effects than numerous of today's drugs.

5. Insect resistance

Genes from B. thuringiensis that can manage several serious insects have been effectively transferred to potatoes, maize and cotton. This new capability of the plants to defend against insect attack indicates that the quantity of pesticides being used can be lessened and hence the nutritional value of the crops is improved.

6. Personalized medicine

Clinical medicine will develop into more personalized with the improvement of the sector of pharmacogenomics. It is the study about genetic inheritence and how a person's genetic inheritence influences the body's react to drugs. Presently, some drugs fail to create it to the market as a small proportion of the medical patients show adverse impacts to a medicine due to chain variants in their DNA.

Therefore, potentially lifesaving medicines never formulate it to the market. Nowadays, doctors must use trial and fault to get the best medicine to treat a special patient as these with the same medical symptoms can show a wide variety of responses to same treatment. In future, doctors will be able to evaluate a patient's genetic outline and recommend the best available medicine therapy and dosage from beginning.

7. Waste cleanup

Deinococcus radiodurans is famous as the earth's toughest bacteria and these are the most radiation resistant life form known. Scientists are fascinated in the organism for the reason of its possible usefulness in cleaning up garbage sites that contain toxic chemicals and radiation. Microbial Genome Program scientists are determining DNA sequence of the C. crescentus genome, one of these organisms responsible for the sewage treatment.

When it comes to different applications of the bioinformatics, the options are unlimited.

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