BIOINFORMATICS AND COMPUTER ANALYSIS

As noted before, the use of computers has revolutionized the way in which genetic information has been gathered and analyzed. The term bioinformatics has been coined to describe the emerging scientific discipline of using computers to handle biological information. It encompasses a large number of fields (Table 8.4). Bioinformatics includes the storage, retrieval, and analysis of data about biomolecules. By far the greatest achievement of the bioinformatics revolution has been the sequencing of the human genome. The term bioinformatics is now used to include analyses associated with DNA microarrays (see later discussion) and assessing the function of genomes.

Because bioinformatics is so widely used, it is important to make genomic data available to  researchers. The data from the Human Genome Project are available on the Internet through the National Center of Biotechnology website (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/). Some other  websites that present sequence data are listed next. At the NCBI home page you can explore the human genome many different ways. Using Entrez Gene, a specific gene can be identified by name. The record for each gene contains the gene name and description, its location, a graphical representation of the introns and exons for all the protein isoforms that are known, and a summary of all the information known about the gene. Additionally, the various domains within the protein, such as actin binding sites, are listed with links to explain the domain and its function. Finally, genes and/or regions of DNA from other organisms that are homologous to the gene are shown.