Course Focus
The end of the 20th century has seen an explosion of information discovered from
living organisms, especially in areas of molecular biology and genetics. The focus
of bioinformatics is dealing with this flood of information, coming from academic,
industry and government labs, and turning it into useful knowledge:
- What are the
critical sources of information for advancing fundamental knowledge in biology,medicine, Biotechnology, pharmacology, agriculture and related biosciences?
- What
are the best computing methods to be applied to collect,organize, analyze and distribute
this information to advance this research?
- How quickly can these methods be integrated
with bioscience research to meet demands of
rapidly growing body of data and to
speed the flow of knowledge?
Full understanding and application of this new data
requires a large and growing body of intelligent, creative and experienced scientists
with strong understanding of both computation and biology. It is growing rapidly
with applications in the areas such as comparative genomics, structural genomics,
transcriptomics, proteomics, cellomics, and metabolic pathway engineering, which
relate to whole genomes, transcriptomes, proteomes, and metabolomes. There is a
current and projected shortage of such people, and a pressing need for educational
institutions to teach bioinformatics. Experienced bioinformaticians are limited
in number, while the need for them in industry, academia and government projects
has grown rapidly. In the mid 1990s, biosciences industries discovered the importance
of bioinformatics to acheive their goals, and quickly stripped academic centers
of the few experts who would normally serve for educating a new generation of students.
Existing degree programs in this area are few. The Advanced Course in Bioinformatics
(ACB) organised by IICT, CDAC & JNTU provides
an insight into the value of rapid
access to scientific information for education and research purposes.
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