About Department

Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that develops and improves on methods for storing, retrieving, organizing and analysing biological data with the aid of computational biology, mathematical models and engineering. Bioinformatics is the field of science in which biology, computer science, and information technology merge into single discipline. With the advancement in genome and protein sequencing projects, bioinformatics is the most useful subject to study and analyse the various macromolecules including genes and proteins. The primary goal of bioinformatics is to increase the understanding of biological processes. The major areas in the department are Evolutionary Genomics, Comparative Genomics & Proteomics, Structural Proteomics, Software Development, Functional Genomics, Molecular Modelling and Drug Designing. Major research efforts in the field include sequence alignment, gene finding, genome assembly, drug design, drug discovery, protein structure alignment, protein structure prediction, prediction of gene expression and protein–protein interactions, genome-wide association studies and the modelling of evolution. Bioinformatics now entails the creation and advancement of databases, algorithms, computational and statistical techniques, and theory to solve formal and practical problems arising from the management and analysis of biological data. Over the past few decades rapid developments in genomic and other molecular research technologies and developments in information technologies have combined to produce a tremendous amount of information related to molecular biology. Bioinformatics has become an important part of many areas of biology. In experimental molecular biology, bioinformatics techniques such as image and signal processing allow extraction of useful results from large amounts of raw data. In the field of genetics and genomics, it aids in sequencing and annotating genomes and their observed mutations. It plays a role in the textual mining of biological literature and the development of biological and gene ontologies to organize and query biological data. It plays a role in the analysis of gene and protein expression and regulation. Bioinformatics tools aid in the comparison of genetic and genomic data and more generally in the understanding of evolutionary aspects of molecular biology. In structural biology, it aids in the simulation and modeling of DNA, RNA, and protein structures as well as molecular interactions.

Bioinformatics has focus on cellular and molecular levels of biology and has a wide application in life sciences. Current research in bioinformatics can be classified into: (i) genomics—sequencing and comparative study of genomes to identify gene and genome functionality, (ii) proteomics—identification and characterization of protein related properties, (iii) cell visualization and simulation to study and model cell behaviour, and (iv) application to the development of drugs and anti-microbial agents. Bioinformatics also offers many interesting possibilities for bioremediation from environment protection point of view. The integration of biodegradation information, with the corresponding protein and genomic data, provides a suitable framework for studying the global properties of the bioremediation network. This discipline requires the integration of huge amount of data from various sources. Chemical structure and reactivity of organic compounds, sequence, structure and function of proteins (enzymes), comparative genomics, environment microbiology and so on. Thus, bioinformatics has focused on cellular and molecular levels of biology and has a wide application in life sciences and environment protection. The study and understanding of cell is prime concern for bioinformatics. The students after completing their degrees will be able to work in various fields including medicine, pharmaceutical industries, computational, medical and bio-chemical research, teaching and genome sequencing/annotation projects.