DNA sequencing is the deciphering of hereditary information. It is an indispensable prerequisite for
many biotechnical applications and technologies and the continual acquisition of genomic information
is very important. This opens the door not only for further research and better understanding of the
architectural plan of life, but also for future clinical diagnosis based on the genetic data of individuals.
Bioinformatics can be broadly defined as the creation and development of advanced information and
computational techniques for problems in biology. More narrowly, bioinformatics is the set of
computing techniques used to manage and extract useful information from the DNA/RNA/protein
sequence data being generated (at high volumes) by automated techniques (e.g. DNA sequencers, DNA
microarrays) and stored in large public databases (e.g. GenBank, Protein DataBank). Certain method for analyzing genetic/protein data has been found to be extremely computationally intensive, providing
motivation for the use of powerful computers. The advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web
(WWW) has substantially increased the availability of information and computational resources
available to experimental biologists. This review will describe the current on-line resources available,
including protein and nucleic acids sequence alignment. |