#Bioinformatics and the developing world

Bioinformatics is the science of managing and analysing biological information. Whereas all branches of modern biology make some use of computers, molecular biology and especially genetic engineering could not even exist without them. Given a certain research and computer infrastructure, developing countries may have relatively easy access to the products of bioinformatics. However, their future use of this technology hinges on the availability of bioinformatics knowledge in the public domain.

Some of the underlying tools for this progress are provided by bioinformatics, which is a collective name used for computer approaches in fields such as molecular biology, biotechnology, medicine and agriculture. In the words of leading biologist Lee Hood, “Biotechnology is the industrial use of biological information”.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has called bioinformatics a ‘mega science’, that is, a strategic discipline that forms the background of the entire biomedical field. This is because, firstly, bioinformatics is universally applicable to molecular biology, and, secondly, bioinformatics has successfully integrated experimental and bibliographic databanks, thereby producing an exemplary scientific infrastructure which is equally applicable to biomedical and to agricultural research. For these two main reasons bioinformatics can be considered a switchboard between the various scientific fields since it allows easy translation and application of findings from one technical area into another.

To know more about Bioinformatics fields follow the link: https://bioinformatics.pulsusconference.com/