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Bioinformatics

Nature Biotechnology volume 17, pages 828–830 (1999)Cite this article

To talk about an information overload in the modern life sciences is an understatement. More than 30,000 of the 100,000 or so human genes have now already been mapped as part of the worldwide Human Genome Project1. The genetic material sequence information that is being amassed as a result, to which should be added all the genome information that exists for organisms other than humans, has been aptly called the approaching "tidal wave of data."2 This tidal wave is, in fact, upon us and will simply continue coming: it includes not only continually updated sequence information for genes and proteins, but also structure/function annotations, disease correlations, population variations, and just about every piece of relevant information that is being gathered by life science, all entered into massive databases.

Bioinformatics is the computer-assisted data management discipline that helps us gather, analyze, and represent this information in order to educate ourselves, understand life's processes in the healthy and disease states, and find new or better drugs. Bioinformatics is being practiced worldwide by academic groups, companies, and national and international research consortia, and it should be thought of as a bedrock of current and future biotechnology, without which the latter simply cannot be done.

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  1. vice president for business development at Argonex Inc., 2044 India Road, Charlottesville, 22901, VA

    Aris Persidis

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  1. Aris Persidis
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Persidis, A. Bioinformatics. Nat Biotechnol 17, 828–830 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/11793

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