Comments on: What is bioinformatics?

By: Daniel Swan

Daniel Swan — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 07:35:43 +0000

I have a definition that I tend to use in front of biologists and that is “the handling and analysis of digital data relating to a biological experiment”. I think this covers most bases from data curation, programming, statistical analysis etc. (the former which I think still separates bioinformatics from ‘computational biology’) I’m sure there are a million people out there who would argue the toss with this definition though

By: jonboy

jonboy — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:51:56 +0000

…. uh ….. sorry …. I glazed over. What is it that you do again?

By: SplineGuy

SplineGuy — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 13:22:08 +0000

I definitely have to agree with you that this is not a working scientific definition and is informal at best. However, for the non-scientific, it does clear up some of the details especially those who glaze over as soon as you mention the term. Thanks for reading!!

By: Animesh Sharma

Animesh Sharma — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 04:41:56 +0000

I feel it is still not clear. First of all lets define science [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science]. Second part is that it may not essentially be a biological knowledge which we derive out of biological information. For example when we look at cell-signaling, it is all about physics of the system. Third part is that we may not need computers to derive knowledge, yet it can be bioinformatics. I think a better definition is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinformatics .