Integrative Bioinformatics

Abstract

Integrative Bioinformatics deals with the development of methods and tools to solve biological problems as well as providing a better understanding or new knowledge about biochemical phenomena by means of data integration and computational experiments [7]. Current high-throughput technologies such as NMR, mass spectrometry, protein/DNA chips, gel electrophoresis data, Yeast Two-Hybrid, QTL mapping, and NGS generate large quantities of high-throughput data. The challenge of Integrative Bioinformatics is to capture, model, simulate, integrate, and analyze this huge amount of data in addition to the data represented by hundreds of biological databases and thousands of scientific journals. The data needs to be integrated and made available in a consistent way to provide new and deeper insights into complex biological systems. Molecular biology produces this volume of data based on high-throughput technologies. One characteristic of this data is exponential growing. Therefore, storing and analysis of this molecular and cellular data essentially uses methods and concepts of Bioinformatics. Currently, there are more than 2,000 database and information systems available via the Internet, which represent this molecular data. Every year new molecular databases and information systems which can be used via the Internet crop up. The classical definition of an information system is based on a database system which represents the data and tools for the user-specific analysis of this data. Today an information system is or can be embedded into the Internet as shown in Fig. 1.1.