Computational Biology involves the development and application of statistical and theoretical methods for the analysis of data

 

Computational Biology

The development and implementation of data-analytical and theoretical methodologies, mathematical modelling, and computational simulation techniques in life sciences is the emphasis of computational biology. Computational Biology and bioinformatics are multidisciplinary fields that create and use computational methods to analyse huge amounts of biological data, such as genetic sequences, cell populations, or protein samples, in order to make new predictions or find novel biology. Analytical approaches, mathematical modelling, and simulation are among the computational methods employed.

Computational Biology is the study of biological, ecological, behavioural, and social systems using mathematical modelling and computational simulation tools. The discipline is extensive in scope, encompassing biology, applied mathematics, statistics, biochemistry, chemistry, biophysics, molecular biology, genetics, genomics, computer science, ecology, and evolution, but it is most usually conceived of as the junction of computer science, biology, and big data. Biological computing, a subject of computer engineering that uses bioengineering and biology to design computers, is not the same as computational biology.

In the early 1970s, bioinformatics began to take shape. It was regarded as a science that studied the informatics processes of many biological systems. Artificial intelligence research at the time was generating new algorithms by leveraging network models of the human brain. The notion of utilising computers to assess and compare big data sets was revisited by biological researchers as a result of the use of biological data to advance other areas. Punch cards were being used to transmit information among academics by 1982. By the end of the 1980s, the amount of data being transferred had grown dramatically. This necessitated the creation of new computer tools for swiftly analysing and interpreting important data.

Computational Biology has been a significant aspect in developing future technologies for the science of biology since the late 1990s, spawning a slew of new subfields. The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) now recognises 21 Communities of Special Interest (COSIs), each of which represents a subset of the greater subject of computational biology. Computational biology has aided and continues to help construct realistic models of the human brain, map the 3D structure of genomes, and assist in modelling biological systems, in addition to assisting in the sequencing of the human genome.