Bioinformatics and computational biology involve the use of techniques including applied mathematics, informatics, statistics, computer science, artificial intelligence, chemistry, and biochemistry to solve biological problems usually on the molecular level. Research in computational biology often overlaps with systems biology. Major research efforts in the field include sequence alignment, gene finding, genome assembly, protein structure alignment, protein structure prediction, prediction of gene expression and protein-protein interactions, and the modeling of evolution.

The terms bioinformatics and computational biology are often used interchangeably. However bioinformatics more properly refers to the creation and advancement of algorithms, computational and statistical techniques, and theory to solve formal and practical problems arising from the management and analysis of biological data. Computational biology, on the other hand, refers to hypothesis-driven investigation of a specific biological problem using computers, carried out with experimental or simulated data, with the primary goal of discovery and the advancement of biological knowledge. Put more simply, bioinformatics is concerned with the information while computational biology is concerned with the hypotheses.

A similar distinction is made by National Institutes of Health in their working definitions of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, where it is further emphasized that there is a tight coupling of developments and knowledge between the more hypothesis-driven research in computational biology and technique-driven research in bioinformatics.

Bioinformatics is also often specified as an applied subfield of the more general discipline of Biomedical informatics.

A common thread in projects in bioinformatics and computational biology is the use of mathematical tools to extract useful information from data produced by high-throughput biological techniques such as genome sequencing. A representative problem in bioinformatics is the assembly of high-quality genome sequences from fragmentary "shotgun" DNA sequencing. Other common problems include the study of gene regulation using data from microarrays or mass spectrometry.

This report – Bioinformatics Market Potential - explains the idea behind this IT activity, which is fast altering the manner in which drugs are discovered and developed globally. The report looks at market activity presently undergoing at major global markets and the expanding prospects of Bioinformatics in these markets.

The report also analyzes market capitalization of the Bioinformatics industry and the primary users of this industry. A value-addition to the report is the analysis of costing of the Bioinformatics Industry. The report also explores the major industry players.



Table of Contents



71 pages

Publication Date : January 2008