Recent strides in genetics and molecular biology have led to numerous new ways of being able to understand the world and relationships of its many entities. Accompanying these strides is a new , expanded biology vocabulary. Perhaps the greatest impetus for technological advance has been the Human Genome Project, an international effort to 1) identify all the approximate 30,000 genes in human DNA, 2) determine the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA, 3) store this information in databases, 4) improve tools for data analysis, 5) transfer related technologies to the private sector, and 6) address the ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) that may arise from the project.
Genome sequencing has created an entirely new field of genomics, which considers phenotype as the interplay of of the activities of many genes. Informatics (or bioinformatics) is the mathematical area of genomics, which involves high powered computers to access gene sequences and compares them in a number of different ways using various software tools.
One of the best introductions to bioinformatics can be found at the Biology Workbench web site.
"Biology is sometimes called an "information-driven" science. This means that the raw material of biology is information, the results of experiments in the laboratory and observations in the field. In this view, the science of biology is all about constructing meaning from the information.
In the last couple of decades, there has been a technical revolution in molecular biology, which has made it possible to get enormous amounts of information about the sequences of amino acids in proteins and the sequences of bases in nucleic acids. To construct meaning from the sequence information, the array of computer techniques called "bioinformatics" has been developed. The components of bioinformatics are sequence databases, and computer programs that analyze the sequences for patterns and similarities.
To understand the basic idea of bioinformatics, one might think of a written language. The text you are reading consists of a series of letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs. If you did not know the meanings of the words and the rules of the language, this page would just be a collection of meaningless symbols. Similarly, the first time scientists saw gene and protein sequences, they saw a string of symbols with no clear meaning in terms of biological function. But now, bioinformatics is showing us many things about what sequences mean. Using bioinformatics, sequences are being used to reveal relationships among different life forms that we could not find out any other way. Bioinformatics is revealing the rules and meaning of a language that is new to human beings but in fact is a billion years old-the Language of Life. "
Taken directly from the Biology Workbench Introduction to Bioinformatics (http://peptide.ncsa.uiuc.edu/introduction.html).
Human Genome Project Information - http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis/
The best, most regularly updated resource regarding Human Genome Project efforts. Links include "About the Human Genome Project, " "Research," "Education," "Medicine," and "Ethical, Legal and Social Issues."
Biology Student Workbench - http://peptide.ncsa.uiuc.edu/index.html
A student-centered bioinformatics project based at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Includes tutorials, inquiry-based laboratories, and resource materials which allow students to successfully use Biology Workbench, a suite of widely-used and well-respected bioinformatics research tools.
