It may be the fundamental discipline of the 21st century, ubiquitously required by diverse fields of endeavor ranging from architecture to medicine. Bioinformatics can be defined as the creation and development of advanced information and computational technologies to solve problems in biology. Bioinformatics typically relies on techniques from informatics, involving efficient algorithms for manipulating large amounts of data stored and processed on high-performance computers, in order to obtain information about genomic or protein sequence data. Applications of bioinformatics include, but are not limited to, the following. Pharmacogenetics Pharmacogenomics Pharmacometrics Proteomics Structural Biology Note that these areas are all interdisciplinary in nature and depend on the ability to manage and interpret large amounts of information.
Functional informatics requires critical mass in both technological and human resources.
Infrastructure to support informatics in areas of data acquisition, date mining, storage, analysis, sharing, and visualization requires significant facilities and computing equipment. In addition, expertise in mathematics, computational science, and pattern recognition is also required. Bioinformatics requires all of the above, plus infrastructure and expertise in genomics, structural biology, chemistry, pharmaceutics, imaging, bioengineering, and medicine. Future of Bioinformatics Through the Human Genome Project , the precise genetic sequences of all 30,000 genes that any human cell contains have been mapped. It is now critical to elucidate the function of each gene, as it is this information that will lead to a greater understanding of human development and the ability to treat many diseases, including AIDS, cancer, MS, and Alzheimer's.