1. Principles of Bioinformatics (0513)
Through the first lecture, I understand and think about the field of bioinformatics.
First, I learned about definition of bioinformatics.
From the beginning part of the lecture, I know that according to the parameter we use, world can be interpreted differently. Therefore, as Jong mentioned, biology is complex and bioinformatics interpret and study about this complex biological phenomenon by using different parameter. In other word, it is mapping the life, universe.
Second, what is universe?
Jong said that universe is the largest set of switches. I think that DNA can be some series of switches because it is composed of gene which can be turn on and off. Also, protein is switch because it can be activated or inactivated by using phosphorylation thorugh the upstream signal. Upstream signal is also switch, so it can be turn on and of. I think that it is infinite layers of switches, therefore, I agree that the universe is the largest set of switches.
Third, I learned about brief history of biology.
Dawin → Mendel → 3D proteins → DNA model → Sequencing → Cloning recombination → Amplification Technologies → Human reference genome → Next generation sequencing/personal genomics → Diagnostics using genomic data → Synthetic biology → Genome engineering → Cancer cure(2022) → Aging cure(2042). I learned that until the last decade, biology study was driven by structural studies such as protein folding, structural comparision, classification, molecular analysis and so on. As technology and internet has developed, people can easily share their data, so recent reserch shift toward sequence, databases, software, computation, and also function of proteins.
Forth, I learned about major domain of bioinformatics.
- Sequence - Genomics
- Structure - Structural genomics, Structural proteomics, Biophysics
- Expression - Functional genomics, proteomics
- Interaction – proteomics, interactomics
- Function – physiomics, metabolomics
In addition to this, there is sixth domain, network. Before I study about network, I leared about protein first. Protein has only 1000 different shape and superfaily, but they function so many different way. Those complexity and diversity is comes from the network of interaction as Jong said.