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miRNomics: MicroRNA Biology and Computational Analysis pp 51–71Cite as

Introduction to Bioinformatics

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Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology ((MIMB,volume 1107))

Abstract

Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field mainly involving molecular biology and genetics, computer science, mathematics, and statistics. Data intensive, large-scale biological problems are addressed from a computational point of view. The most common problems are modeling biological processes at the molecular level and making inferences from collected data. A bioinformatics solution usually involves the following steps:

  • Collect statistics from biological data.

  • Build a computational model.

  • Solve a computational modeling problem.

  • Test and evaluate a computational algorithm.

This chapter gives a brief introduction to bioinformatics by first providing an introduction to biological terminology and then discussing some classical bioinformatics problems organized by the types of data sources. Sequence analysis is the analysis of DNA and protein sequences for clues regarding function and includes subproblems such as identification of homologs, multiple sequence alignment, searching sequence patterns, and evolutionary analyses. Protein structures are three-dimensional data and the associated problems are structure prediction (secondary and tertiary), analysis of protein structures for clues regarding function, and structural alignment. Gene expression data is usually represented as matrices and analysis of microarray data mostly involves statistics analysis, classification, and clustering approaches. Biological networks such as gene regulatory networks, metabolic pathways, and protein–protein interaction networks are usually modeled as graphs and graph theoretic approaches are used to solve associated problems such as construction and analysis of large-scale networks.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Engineering, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey

    Tolga Can

Authors
  1. Tolga Can
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dabburiya Village, Israel

    Malik Yousef

  2. Izmir Institute of Technology, Izmir, Turkey

    Jens Allmer

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Can, T. (2014). Introduction to Bioinformatics. In: Yousef, M., Allmer, J. (eds) miRNomics: MicroRNA Biology and Computational Analysis. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1107. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-748-8_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-748-8_4

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  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, Totowa, NJ

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-62703-747-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-62703-748-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Protocols

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