Bioinformatics: Application to Genomics

Abstract

In this chapter, the basic concepts of bioinformatics and some of the important tasks in biological sequence and structure analysis are described. In biological sequence analysis, (i) pairwise and multiple sequence alignments, (ii) database search against a query sequence and (iii) phylogenetic analysis are fundamental tasks. Similarly, in the structure analysis of biological molecules, the most important tasks are (i) visualisation of 3D structures, (ii) prediction of three-dimensional structures of proteins, (iii) docking and (iv) molecular dynamics simulation. Further, the recent developments in bioinformatics, namely, ‘omes’ and ‘omics’ concepts along with their integration in systems biology, which are emerging areas in the postgenomic era, are also briefly described. Finally, some of the important applications of bioinformatics in various areas like agricultural, pharmaceutical and medical sciences are provided.