[PDF]Origin & History of Bioinformatics - arXiv arxiv.org/pdf/0911.4230 by SM Thampi - ‎2009 http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0911/0911.4230.pdf http://arxiv.

[PDF]Origin & History of Bioinformatics - arXiv arxiv.org/pdf/0911.4230 by SM Thampi - ‎2009 http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0911/0911.4230.pdf http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0911/0911.4230.pdf "The gathering, archival, dissemination, modeling, and analysis of biological data falls within a relatively young field of scientific inquiry, currently known as ‘bioinformatics’, ‘Bioinformatics was spurred by wide accessibility of computers with increased compute power and by the advent of genomics. Genomics made it possible to acquire nucleic acid sequence and structural information from a wide range of genomes at an unprecedented pace and made this information accessible to further analysis and experimentation. For example, sequences were matched to those coding for globular proteins of known structure (defined by crystallography) and were used in high-throughput combinatorial approaches (such as DNA microarrays) to study patterns of gene expression. Inferences from equences and biochemical data were used to construct metabolic networks. These activities have generated terabytes of data that are now being analyzed with computer, statistical, and machine learning techniques. The sheer number of sequences and information derived from these endeavors has given the false impression that imagination and hypothesis do not play a role in acquisition of iological knowledge. However, bioinformatics becomes only a science when fueled by hypothesis-driven research and within the context of the complex and everchanging living world. "