BIOINFORMATICS
However bioinformatics, more properly refers to the creation and advancement of algorithms, computational and statistical techniques, and theory to solve formal and practical problems posed by or inspired from the management and analysis of biological data. Computational biology, on the other hand, refers to hypothesis-driven investigation of a specific biological problem using computers, carried out with experimental and simulated data, with the primary goal of discovery and the advancement of biological knowledge.
These are sorted by national and international centres. There are two major such centres; the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) which is in the US, and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) which is in the UK, at Hinxton Hall outside Cambridge. These two organisations sort and annotate incoming DNA data, which are released as the Genbank and EMBL databases respectively. Major releases of the database take place every few months; incremental updates are released daily.
number of genomes have now been completely sequenced, and the data is freely available via the EMBL and other databases. At present, the databases include many separate genes as well as the complete genomes in sections - again, some rationalisation will take place. Those completed include Haemophilus influenzae, Sarcomyces cerevischia, Methanococcus genitalium, Methanococcus jannaschii, Synecosystis PCC 6803 and E.

Bioinformatics is viewed here as an interdisciplinary field that greatly benefits from collaborators coming from disparate backgrounds. This short course will use a problem-solving, collaborative approach to analyze molecular data in several different ways. Bioinformatics is being applied to solve current biological problems in areas such as medicine, agriculture, conservation, and evolution. The relationships between evolutionary theory and the analysis of molecular sequence and structure data will be emphasized.