Bits of Biology
Author: Mohammad Tarek

We live in an accelerating world that's pumping tons of Data in each second to the communication networks between different disciplines. Well, for science the case is not so different, the word Bioinformatics was introduced as an indicating term for marriage between Computer science and Biology. It's imaginable now that every scientific piece of work that communicates Information sciences to biology is a matter of Bioinformatics. In the real scientific community the story is a little bit more complex where the so called bioinformatician is the guy who develops and implements computer systems to biology problems. You can imagine that our DNA which encodes our genetic information is Composed of A, T, C and G, so we can call it a code for our phenotypes as living organisms, then try to think of how modern computing machines work in so called bits of information of digital language of 0 and 1. It's obvious now that both systems have a lot in common.

Actually the field of bioinformatics is a very bright example of light speed evolution in science, starting from the analysis of DNA codes to Drug Design and personalized medicine and not to mention the variety of branches dealing with proteomes and metabolomes. If you want a detailed tree of Bioinformatics branches you may actually reach an endless diverging tree of data that's related to every single problem in biology such as Cancer and Viral epidemics.

Sometimes it's not so fair to state that the only contributor in this scientific relationship is the Computer, that's because biology as well is always inspiring bioinformaticians to develop new algorithms and tools in machine learning, data analysis and a lot more in order to cope with the unstoppable evolution of diseases affecting the human race. If you are wondering around science careers and want to contribute It's then the perfect start for you to start learning bioinformatics from various resources where the most magnificent thing about the field is that you can say it's an open source field with no limitations or barriers so you should always learn and share your work allowing others to further develop your approaches.

Computational methods that tremendously saved billions of dollars in a cost effective manner to lab work with growing fidelities as well as contributing to time saving plans for huge scientific projects, these methods are the core of Future Science and every single breakthrough in modern science is somehow computer dependent, based on that we should raise the awareness worldwide for the financial investment and support to develop these methods. Before raising the concerns about machines that control our data systems and future consequences of that, we should always remember that it's not just about big data, it's more about interpretation and analyses of Data products of Biology Research Labs.



About Author / Additional Info:
I am Currently a Medical student at the Armed Forces College of Medicine AFCM at Cairo and a Bioinformatics Research Student