These studies start with biospecimens from: Cheek (buccal) swabs Blood Urine Tissue The samples are then preserved, processed, and analyzed using a variety of techniques.
Image courtesy of The National Human Genome Research Institute: http://www.genome.gov

The field of bioinformatics has evolved enough so that the most pressing task now involves the analysis and interpretation of various types of data, including nucleotide and amino acid sequences, protein domains, and protein structures. The actual process of analyzing and interpreting data is referred to as computational biology.

The rationale for applying computational approaches to facilitate the understanding of various biological processes includes:

• A more global perspective in experimental design, and
• The ability to capitalize on the emerging technology of database-mining - the process by which testable hypotheses are generated regarding the function or structure of a gene or protein of interest by identifying similar sequences in better characterized organisms.

 

Finding Genes

One of the most important aspects of bioinformatics is identifying genes within a long DNA sequence. Until the development of bioinformatics, the only way to locate genes along the chromosome was to study their behavior in the organism (in vivo) or isolate the DNA and study it in a test tube (in vitro).

		Bioinformatics allows scientists to make educated guesses about where genes are located simply by analyzing sequence data using a computer. This image is a map of the human X chromosome showing genes.
		Image courtesy of the NCBI - The National Center for Biotechnology Information

 

Protein Modeling

The process of evolution has resulted in the production of DNA sequences that encode proteins with specific functions. In the absence of a protein structure that has been determined by X-ray crystallography or nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, researchers can try to predict the three-dimensional structure using protein or molecular modeling.

This method uses experimentally determined protein structures (templates) to predict the structure of another protein that has a similar amino acid sequence (target).