The Value of Bioinformatics

SoftwareBy Robert Ward Cutler

With advances in technology, enormous amounts of data have become available for bioscience researchers. While this high volume of information holds tremendous promise for expanding the science knowledge base, it must be organized for meaningful study. Bioinformatics is a discipline that devises methods for storing, distributing, and analyzing biological data used by diverse areas of research. Bioinformatics professionals develop software and tools that assist researchers in the analysis of data related to molecular biology and genome studies.

As bioinformatics information is integrated, scientists develop a comprehensive picture of normal cellular activities that enables them to study how these activities become altered in different disease states. Computer software aids researchers in analyzing and interpreting data pertaining to nucleotide and amino acid sequences, protein domains, and protein structures. This software allows researchers to determine relationships among components of large data sets. This process might include methods to identify a gene within a sequence. The software also facilitates the prediction of protein structure and/or function, and permits the clustering of protein sequences into families of related sequences.

Robert Ward Cutler, Ph.D. is the developer of Genehound™, a gene sequencing and identification software program for prokaryotic genomes. Dr. Cutler is a bioinformatics expert and computer consultant with several years’ experience in academic research and teaching. Robert Ward Cutler was awarded a Fulbright Research and Teaching Fellowship to lecture in bioinformatics at Chiang Mai University in Thailand.

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