2. Protein sequence analysis

Sequence analysis is the very origin of the term "bioinformatics". This term, whose origins are still obscure, probably succeeded the word "biocomputing", preferred before the 1990s, to distinguish the use of computers for "textual" analyses from the numerical modelling that then dominated computer applications in biology (e.g. simulation of metabolic pathways, nerve impulse propagation, etc.).

Although more complex (as it is made up of 20 elementary building blocks with very different physico-chemical properties), the determination of protein sequences has historically preceded that of nucleic acids (made up of 4 different nucleotides). The need to compare and classify these new objects of biology, as well as to understand the relationship between sequence and function, has long been the main driving force behind innovation in bioinformatics.