IT in the realm of molecules

Bioinformaticians are trying to connect IT with medicine, chemistry, pharmacology. In the recent years the significance of their work grew immense. The reason: huge amounts of data that are needed in Life Sciences, and pioneering successes in biological research. 

Scientific research no longer takes place only in the laboratory, but increasingly in the evaluation and interpretation of data. For example, in the analysis of human, animal or plant genetic material, large amounts of data are created that must be processed and correlated. But where computer scientists, biologists and doctors can not make headway on their own, bioinformaticians are in demand. In addition you need them for the development of new diagnostic methods as well as powerful therapies and active substances against AIDS, cancer, hepatitis or multi-resistant pathogens. 

Between research and application

The scope of tasks of a bioinformatics specialist ranges from software development, which exactly meets the requirements of the current research program, to the preparation of data and its storage in specially developed databases. This ensures that other teams can use the research results. In genetic research, bioinformaticians need to analyze data on a single gene, an organism, or even a whole ecosystem. For this they use database applications, self-designed databases, data integration, analysis programs, image processing and visualization techniques.  When bioinformaticians decode genomes, they first find the genetic information as small segments. Then they develop programs that filter out overlaps between sections and compose the complete genome. To find out which section is responsible for which features, they write computer programs that then compare the global genetic data of related organisms. So they can track down the functions of individual genes and identify disease-causing gene segments.  

Enigma of heredity

Until now it was not possible to differentiate between the gene variants that we have received from our father and mother. Findings about this would open up new and more targeted therapies, because the gene variants could be used to determine wether someone is susceptible to a particular disease or not. Latest sequencing technologies now make it possible to do just that. Bioinformaticians have developed special software to carry out this evaluation and computational methods that are used.