[What is bioinformatics?].
Yet bioinformatics has neither clear definition nor proper Japanese equivalent for this word. Bioinformatics is mainly composed of two fields or disciplines; one is computer and information technology as a tool for analyzing massive data such as genome and proteome, and the other one is research for the integrated biology based on the knowledge of genome. Classical and narrow-sense bioinformatics corresponds to the former. The latter called new bioinformatics aims to understand living thing as a whole, where both genome information and mathematical model play complimentary roles. From now the postgenome area on, this new bioinformatics may give novel perspective about living thing, biology and human.
Ashida
Hiroshi
H
Division of Biomedical Information Sciences, National Defense Medical College Research Institute, Tokorozawa 359-8513.
D019295:Computational Biology; D023281:Genomics; D008490:Medical Informatics