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Introduction
Rapid
advances in bioinformatics are providing new hopes to patients of life threatening
diseases. Gene chips will be able to screen heart attack and diabetics years before
patients develop symptoms. In near future, patients will go to a doctor's clinic
with lab- on- a- chip devices. The device will inform the doctor in real time
if the patient's ailment will respond to a drug based on his DNA. These
will help doctors diagnose life-threatening illness faster, eliminating expensive,
time-consuming ordeals like biopsies and sigmoidoscopies. Gene chips reclassify
diseases based on their underlying molecular signals, rather than misleading surface
symptoms. The chip would also confirm the patient's identity and even establish
paternity.
Bioinformatics is an inter disciplinary research area. It
is a fusion of computing, biotechnology and biological sciences. Bioinformatics
is poised to one of the most prodigious growth areas in the next to decades. Being
the interface between the most rapidly advancing fields of biological and computational
sciences, it is immense in scope and vast in applications.
Bioinformatics
is the study of biological information as it passes from its storage site in the
genome to the various gene products in the cell. Bioinformatics involves the creation
and computational technologies for problems in molecular biology. As such ,it
deals with methods for storing, retrieving and analyzing biological data, such
as nuclei acid (DNA/RNA)and protein sequence, structures, functions, path ways
and interactions. The science of Bioinformatics, which is the melding of molecular
biology with computer science is essential to the use of genomic information in
understanding human diseases and in the identification of new molecular targets
of drug discovery. New discoveries
are being made in the field of genomics, an area of study which looks at the DNA
sequence of an organism in order to determine which genes code for beneficial
traits and which genes are involved in inherited diseases.If you are not tall
enough, the stature could be altered accordingly. If you are weak and not strong
enough, your physique could be improved. If you think this is the script for a
science fiction movie, you are mistaken. It is the future reality.
Evolution
Of Bioinformatics DNA is the genetic material
of organism. It contains all the information needed for the development and existence
of an organism. The DNA molecule is formed of two long polynucleotide chains which
are spirally coiled on each other forming a double helix. Thus it has the form
of spirally twisted ladder. DNA is a molecule made from sugar, phosphate and bases.
The bases are guanine (G), cytosine(C)adenine(A)
and thiamine(T).Adenine pairs only with Thiamine and Guanine pairs only with Cytosine.
The various combinations of these bases make up with DNA. That is; AAGCT, CCAGT,
TACGGT etc. An infinite number of combinations of these bases is possible. And
then the gene is a sequence of DNA that represents a fundamental unit of heredity.
Human genome consists of approximately 30,000 genes, containing approximately
3 billion base pairs.
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