Definition of Bioinformatics.
Bioinformatics is a branch of biology, which deals with solving the biological problems using computational resources. It is an interdisciplinary field which includes mathematics, computer science, biology, and physics.
Bioinformatics is an emerging field in Pakistan. Whereas it is relatively advance in developed countries.
The purpose of bioinformatics is to analyze the biological system or pathogenicity of different diseases occur in living organism, in order to find out the possible cure or treatment to the disease. For this purpose, different kind of genomic, proteomic or molecular data acquired and analyzed through the various algorithms. In bioinformatics, there are sub fields which are interdependent. One is to build the computational tools and algorithms to analyze different data types. Second is to analyze the dataset and interpret the biological problem. In later case we acquired the disease data and pass-through different pipelines to find out the basic problem and its solution at molecular level.
In educational sector of Pakistan, many universities are offering bachelor’s degrees in bioinformatics but there are few universities which offer master’s degrees in this field all over the country. The universities which are offering MS in bioinformatics include National university of sciences and technology, Quaid e Azam University, and Comsats University in Islamabad. Main interdisciplinary subjects which are being taught including mathematics, computer languages (R, python, linux), machine learning etc. These subjects are broadening the horizon of bioinformatics and linking the field to other scientific subjects to cater the biological problems.
As the bioinformatics is relatively new in Pakistan, its industry is being set up and have a lot of potential to build in due course of time. Whereas, different laboratories have already equipped with the machines and instruments required in this field such as Next generation sequencing machines, High throughput computers and devices used to deal with the big data. These laboratories are Alpha genomics, Bioinformatics lab UET, Bioinformatics research lab in CEMB etc.
The scope of bioinformatics was very limited due to the lack of the research resources in the educational and industrial sector. But in the meantime, industry is being developed which could be used to build research resources in the hospital and clinical laboratories. So, the future of the bioinformatics is promising in Pakistan. It will bring advancement and new techniques in the field of medicine and pathology. With the passage of time pharmaceutical industries are revolutionizing and realizing the importance of advancement in the clinical medicinal field. As well as the automation in the laboratory procedures and in industrial methods improving the quality of drugs. The whole advancement in the biological field is promising that many uncurable diseases could be studied thoroughly in less time using computational power and tools. The research at clinical level could be used to move towards the personalized medicine for individuals. With the help of bioinformatics, the data of local diseases and patients could be easily maintained by building databases and different archives. Not only this we would be able to participate in the international collaborations and global projects.