Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combines biology, computer science, information engineering, mathematics and statistics to analyze and interpret the biological data. Bioinformatics has been used for in silico analyses of biological queries using mathematical and statistical techniques.
Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, responding to stimuli, providing structure to cells and organisms, and transporting molecules from one location to another. Proteins differ from one another primarily in their sequence of amino acids, which is dictated by the nucleotide sequence of their genes, and which usually results in protein folding into a specific 3D structure that determines its activity.
Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dimensional structural configuration. In contrast to genetics, which refers to the study of individual genes and their roles in inheritance, genomics aims at the collective characterization and quantification of all of an organism's genes, their interrelations and influence on the organism. Genes may direct the production of proteins with the assistance of enzymes and messenger molecules. In turn, proteins make up body structures such as organs and tissues as well as control chemical reactions and carry signals between cells. Genomics also involves the sequencing and analysis of genomes through uses of high throughput DNA sequencing and bioinformatics to assemble and analyze the function and structure of entire genomes. Advances in genomics have triggered a revolution in discovery-based research and systems biology to facilitate understanding of even the most complex biological systems such as the brain.
Proteomics is the large-scale study of proteins. Proteins are vital parts of living organisms, with many functions. The proteome is the entire set of proteins produced or modified by an organism or system. Proteomics enables the identification of ever-increasing numbers of proteins. This varies with time and distinct requirements, or stresses, that a cell or organism undergoes. Proteomics is an interdisciplinary domain that has benefitted greatly from the genetic information of various genome projects, including the Human Genome Project. It covers the exploration of proteomes from the overall level of protein composition, structure, and activity, and is an important component of functional genomics.
The branches of science known informally as omics are various disciplines in biology whose names end in the suffix -omics, such as genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, metagenomics and transcriptomics. Omics aims at the collective characterization and quantification of pools of biological molecules that translate into the structure, function, and dynamics of an organism or organisms.
The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics is an academic not-for-profit foundation which federates bioinformatics activities throughout Switzerland.
Molecular biophysics is a rapidly evolving interdisciplinary area of research that combines concepts in physics, chemistry, engineering, mathematics and biology. It seeks to understand biomolecular systems and explain biological function in terms of molecular structure, structural organization, and dynamic behaviour at various levels of complexity. This discipline covers topics such as the measurement of molecular forces, molecular associations, allosteric interactions, Brownian motion, and cable theory. Additional areas of study can be found on Outline of Biophysics. The discipline has required development of specialized equipment and procedures capable of imaging and manipulating minute living structures, as well as novel experimental approaches.
The Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB) is a non-profit autonomous institute set up by the Department of IT, BT and S&T, Government of Karnataka. It is located in a 20-acre campus in the southern part of the City of Bengaluru and is a part of Biotech Park.
Gajendra Pal Singh Raghava is an Indian bio-informatician and head of computational biology at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology.
Mark Borodovsky is a Regents' Professor at the Join Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering of Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University and Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Genomics at Georgia Tech. He is also a Chair of the Department of Bioinformatics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in Moscow, Russia.
Ram Samudrala is a professor of computational biology and bioinformatics at the University at Buffalo, and formerly at the University of Washington in Seattle, United States. He researches protein and proteome folding, structure, function, interaction, design, and evolution spanning atomic to organismal levels of description. He has published more than 140 manuscripts in a variety of journals including Science, Nature, PLoS Biology, Drug Discovery Today, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Nagendra Kumar Singh is an Indian agricultural scientist. He is a National Professor under ICAR at National Research Centre for Plant Biotechnology, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. He was born in a small village called Rajapur in the Mau District of Uttar Pradesh. He is known for his research in the area of plant genomics and biotechnology, particularly for his contribution in the decoding of rice, tomato and pigeonpea genomes and understanding of wheat seed storage proteins and their effect on wheat quality. He has also made significant advances in comparative analysis of rice and wheat genomes and mapping of genes for salt tolerance and basmati quality traits in rice.
Protein function prediction methods are techniques that bioinformatics researchers use to assign biological or biochemical roles to proteins. These proteins are usually ones that are poorly studied or predicted based on genomic sequence data. These predictions are often driven by data-intensive computational procedures. Information may come from nucleic acid sequence homology, gene expression profiles, protein domain structures, text mining of publications, phylogenetic profiles, phenotypic profiles, and protein-protein interaction. Protein function is a broad term: the roles of proteins range from catalysis of biochemical reactions to transport to signal transduction, and a single protein may play a role in multiple processes or cellular pathways.
Jeffrey Skolnick is an American computational biologist. He is currently a Georgia Institute of Technology School of Biology Professor, the Director of the Center for the Study of Systems Biology, the Mary and Maisie Gibson Chair, the Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Computational Systems Biology, the Director of the Integrative BioSystems Institute, and was previously the Scientific Advisor at Intellimedix.
Shantanu Chowdhury is an Indian structural biologist and a professor at Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. He is known for developing a mechanism for gene regulation mediated by DNA Secondary-Structure in diverse cellular contexts. An elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India, he is a recipient of the National Bioscience Award for Career Development of the Department of Biotechnology in 2010. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 2012, for his contributions to biological sciences.
Mark S. Boguski was an American pathologist specializing in computational analysis and structural biology, He was elected in 2001 to the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, and was a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics.
Debasisa Mohanty is an Indian computational biologist, bioinformatician and a staff scientists at the National Institute of Immunology, India. Known for his studies on structure and function prediction of proteins, genome analysis and computer simulation of biomolecular systems, Mohanty is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies namely the Indian Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy and the National Academy of Sciences, India. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to biosciences, in 2009.
Durai Sundar is an Indian computational biologist, bioinformatician and the current Head of the Department of Biochemical Engineering and Biotechnology at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He is known for his studies in the fields of genome editing tool designing, biological studies of natural drugs and metabolic engineering as well as for his participation in the Indo-Japanese collaborative research initiatives on anti-cancer drug development and is a life member of the National Academy of Sciences, India.
Ganesh Bagler is known for his research in Computational Gastronomy, an emerging data science of food, flavors and health. By blending food with data and computation he has helped establish the foundations of this niche area. Starting with the investigation of food pairing in the Indian cuisine, his lab has contributed to computational gastronomy with studies on culinary fingerprints of world cuisines, culinary evolution, benevolent health impacts of spices, and taste prediction algorithms.
