It was a regular day i was in Mumbai, to conduct a Workshop on a very new technology back in October, 2018. There I met an aged person sitting in the conference room where we were supposed to conduct our sessions. When i talked with him, i got to know that he is one of the participants of the workshop. That time he was about 65 years old. Then, it was time and we started the session started the interaction and it turned out that he was the VP in some pharma company in Mumbai and he was so much enjoying the sessions that we enjoyed even more conducting the session him being in the program.
Then i got to the thinking that him being at that age is enthusiastic about learning new things and the appreciations we got from him were priceless.
Then we realised this thing that there will be a lot of people who would be interested in learning new technologies and because of some ot the other constraints they might not be able to learn new things.
The biggest problem with Applications of Bioinformatics is that people lack awareness about this wonderful technology which can revolutionize the whole research fraternity.
But before we get into understanding Applications of Bioinformatics we first need to understand what is Bioinformatics? & Why is bioinformatics needed?
Bioinformatics is a relatively new field as compared to any other field of lifescience and very under rated technology of use in India. But now the times are changing and more & More people are coming into the field of Bioinformatics and exploring a lot of enexplored areas.
When the human genome project was started scientists were getting a huge amount of biological data which was practically impossible to print in the form of a book as it needed to be accessible by everyone around the globe to work upon this data. Then, people came up with the idea of having dedicated databases for Biological Data which is accessible by everyone around the world. Hence, people can access the data already there in these databases and they can also submit new data generated from their own research.
Now when the separate databases were created. Next requirement was to analyse these data to make sense out of it. Otherwise the whole work done by the scientists was waste. Then different types of analysis tools were developed and this is how bioinformatics came in and became the important part of our research these day.
Bioinformatics operates on 3 main applications or we can say bioinformatics has 3 main pillars as mentioned below:
1. Databases – Developing new databases so that the existing data can be accessed by the researchers and new entries can be submitted to these databases for sharing of the information.
2. Tools – The data generated from several different experiments is useless until analysed hence development of new tools is crucial.
3. Analysis – The whole motif of generating new data is useless until that data is analysed in biologically meaningful manner.
The biggest myth around bioinformatics, which more than 60% of biologists have is that they need to know coding or programming to work in bioinformatics. But that is not a case anyone from the biological/life science/pharma field with little knowledge of using computers can easily work in the field of Bioinformatics and transform the results of their research.
What are examples of bioinformatics?
The best examples of bioinformatics are Chemoinformatics, Proteomics, Genomics, Pharmacology Etc. Where we can utilise different aspects of life sciences to ease off our work for better research.
Now, coming back our main topic of discussion i.e. applications of bioinformaticsThe Scope & Applications of Bioinformatics includes a vast and inter-related technology with all the fields of LifeSciences including Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, Biochemistry Etc.
Some of the examples of Applications of Bioinformatics are:
1. Drug Discovery/Vaccine Discovery
One of the major applications of Bioinformatics is in the field of Bioinformatics where bioinformatics pipelines can be used for the discovery of new drug molecules. Before the introduction to the applications of bioinformatics it used to take approxiamtely 15-20 years for a new drug to come to the market. But now with the help of new approaches we can bring a new drug with in the span of a few years.
The best example of the application of Bioinformatics is the discovery of COVID-19 vaccine that within a spam of few weeks a outburst of COVID 19 in 2020 we had a few promising lead molecules. With in a span of 10 months those drugs were ready to be given to the patients also. Hence, we have a huge applications of bioinformatics in pharmaceutical industry as mentioned below:
The best part about using bioinformatics approaches in Drug / Vaccine Design is that :
- It saves time – That within a span of few week we can screen huge libraries of the molecules and send the good molecules for further testing.
- Cost Effective – During the process of this whole activity one a computer and a few software tools are required. Unlike the the traditional method where a lot of Man power, aparatus, reagents are required.
- Efficient – Excluding the human error the efficeincy of bioinformatics tools stands at minimum of 80%.
Hence, it is a better way to select the best molecule for further processing and getting a new drug in the market soon.
2. Personalized Medicine
Personalized Medicine is also a very revolutionary field of Bioinformatics where in place of treating a patient with general medicines new medications are developed for the patients suffering from very serious and deadly diseases so that the side effects of the the general drugs and be avoided and the patients are administered with only the medications which will help them recover with least possible side effects. All this would have been possible by analyzing the genome of the patient and then designing the drugs for them. Genome Analysis or Genome Sequencing is another application of bioinformatics discussed below.
3. Genome Sequencing
Genome sequencing is another ground breaking technology which makes use of bioinformatics tools on a very large scale right now the potential of this technology is not very well discovered and scients are still discovering the possible applications of this technology of Genome Sequencing, Genome Analysis, Next Generation Sequencing Etc.
In this technology we analyze the different biological samples from Microbes, Food, Humans and analyse to improve them. Different biological samples like DNA, RNA Etc.
There are several different types of Next Generation Sequencing technologies beased on their applications and use for the humans like DNA-Seq, RNA-Seq, ChIP-Seq, Mthyl-Seq, T-Cell Repertoire Sequencing, Metagenomics Etc. A lot of information about several different species can be carried out with the help of Genome Sequencing Technology to improve the Human life or for the betterment of the humans.
So to conclude i would like to say that bioinformatics holds a huge potential of transforming our lives and boost research like never before so i would like to say that let go of all the myths around bioinformatics and get onboard to the wonderful journey.
To know more about the applications of Bioinformatics, pleas feel free to join us for a 3 Hour Short Course on Genome Analysis, you can register HERE or if you are interested in exploring more about Drug Discovery you can register HERE
Or you can explore the possibilities of career options in the field of Bioinformatics, the article can be accessed HERE