What is Bioinformatics?
Some of you may not be familiar with the term Bioinformatics. Bioinformatics is the study of biological data using information and communication tools. It includes mathematics, statistics and computer algorithms. It is merely not biology, but a combination of many fields of science. The fundamental purpose of bioinformatics is analyzing biological data using computer programs. Programming languages are used as tools in bioinformatics such as Python, C and C++.
How to apply Bioinformatics in Plant Sciences?
Single gene analysis is the most fundamental molecular level analysis in plant bioinformatics. All genes in the plants can be analyzed using single-gene analysis. Furthermore, bioinformatics is used to identify biochemical pathways in plants to understand higher-level functions in plant systems. Protein modeling was a great challenge in the past. Thanks to bioinformatics, most plant proteins can be modeled now using bioinformatics tools.
Role in Plant Research
There are many roles of bioinformatics in plant research. It helps many research areas in crop improvement such as improving nutritional quality, development of drought-resistant and insect resistant varieties. In most of these procedures, bioinformatics techniques are used for sequencing data processing, data organizing and screening processes. There are many databases regarding plant genes that aid in plant-based research with the use of bioinformatics techniques. NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information), KEGG (Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes) and EST (Expressed Sequence Tags) are well-known databases which are generally used to find out information about the gene sequences using developed computer programs.
Why do we learn Bioinformatics?
With the current pandemic situation of Covid-19, Bioinformatics and Molecular Biology have caught more attention of both scientists and the general public. Bioinformatics is used to find out the genetic deformities in plants and animals, discover new medical treatments and collect unrevealed data about the genomes of plant and animal life. Currently, many kinds of research are happening all around the world, but the world needs more researchers in the field of bioinformatics. This novel field will be interesting for undergraduates who are interested in both biology and computer science. If you are a postgraduate student willing to do your PhD on bioinformatics, there are numerous opportunities throughout the world. Therefore, a long journey awaits in front of the bioinformatics enthusiasts in the future world!
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