Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics is the discipline of analyzing biological information, mainly contained in the sequence of macromolecules (nucleic acids and proteins) and their three-dimensional structure. It is a theoretical branch of biology, largely predating the "genomics revolution" of the 1990s.

Bioinformatics is not simply the application of traditional computer science concepts and tools to biological data. It covers a whole range of highly specific techniques, intimately linked to the objects of study of molecular biology and genomics.

More recently, the introduction of massively parallel experimental techniques (e.g. DNA chips), producing a mass of digital data, has led bioinformaticians to adopt more general mathematical and statistical methods, developed in other scientific fields confronted with large volumes of data ("data mining").

Finally, bioinformatics is inextricably linked to the existence of major international public databases, the establishment of numerous Internet servers, and the "open access" attitude of its developers.