Cracking Life’s Code: How Bioinformatics is Changing Science
Introduction - Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that combines biology, computer science, mathematics, and statistics to analyze and interpret biological data. At its core, bioinformatics seeks to develop and apply computational methods for understanding biological systems, from the molecular level of DNA and proteins to the population level of ecosystems. As the volume of biological data has exploded over the past few decades—driven largely by advances in high-throughput sequencing technologies—bioinformatics has become indispensable for managing, analyzing, and deriving insights from complex datasets. Historical Context Early Foundations (1950s–1970s): The conceptual roots of bioinformatics trace back to the discovery of the DNA double helix in 1953 by Watson and Crick. In the late 1960s, Margaret Dayhoff compiled the first protein sequence database, and devised the one-letter amino acid code, laying groundwork for s...