Bioinformática en Colombia: presente y futuro de la investigación biocomputacional

Abstract

Bioinformatics emerged about 50 years ago, but it was developed greatly during the early 1980s by robust databases such as GenBank, EMBL, and DNA Database of Japan (DDBJ). Bioinformatic routines were rapidly adapted once the main algorithms for sequence analysis became available worldwide. As in other science fields, bioinformatics had minimal impact in low-income countries of Latin America until the last decade. We revised the bioinformatics state of art in Colombia and found a few bioinformatics groups carrying out basic computational biology research. Nowadays, bioinformatics in Colombia has a hopeful scenario thanks to recent science policies adopted by the Colombian Government. Such policies have been adopted in order to establish a new model of sustainable scientific research. In this brief report we revise the bioinformatics state of the art in Colombia. Finally, we conclude with some considerations for the proposed science model and we describe different perspectives of interest for the Colombian scientific community.