What is Bioinformatics and Computational Biology?
Bioinformatics and Computational Biology is a field that primarily combines biology and computing but that has plenty of opportunities as well for physics, chemistry, mathematics, statistics and pre-med students. What’s the difference between Bioinformatics and Computational Biology? Bioinformatics, apart from being an academic field, also has a somewhat more specific meaning in industry: it refers to technologies associated with extracting DNA and protein data. Computational Biology refers to a broader body of knowledge that includes bioinformatics as well as computational approaches that are in the research stages. We use the term bioinformatics in its broader, academic sense to mean both Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. Why should students be interested? • Bioinformatics is one of the hottest and fastest growing fields today. The ability to sequence DNA and understand the “DNA code” is revolutionizing biology and biomedical sciences, enabled by the sophisticated software to
