Computer assisted analysis of genes

Abstract

The overwhelming volume of molecular data generated over the last 30 years and the need to understand the messages coded by DNA has lead to the development of global bioinformatics resources. The scientific community has collaborated worldwide toward developing and linking computer database DNA and protein repositories and providing computer-based analysis tools that are publicly available on the Internet. Central to these collaborations are institutions such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States, which created the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) located in England that created the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI). This chapter is a general introduction to using Internet based computing resources to support research in molecular biology. An overview of four popular biological data retrieval systems and five commonly used computer-based molecular analysis tools are discussed. © 2009 Springer-Verlag US.