Email: mount@u.arizona.edu
Not long ago, training in bioinformatics involved learning to identify
genes and
translate them, finding homologous sequences, predicting secondary
structure in
proteins and RNA, building phylogenetic trees and so on.
The need to understand,
develop and use the computational tools for performing these basic
tasks has not
changed.
However, the recent increase in sequence and biological information
from genome
projects and new information on gene function and regulation has created
an urgent
need for more bioinformatics training. Now it is necessary to
collect, assemble,
display and annotate genomes, to compare genomes for finding orthologs
with the
same function, to identify domains and families, and to manage and
integrate
diverse data sets. Moreover, the use of web pages for data entry,
analysis and
retrieval has also created a need to know what is available on the
web, how to
retrieve and store large amount of data from these sources, and how
to develop
your own site that supports both interactive queries and automated
ones generated
by remote computer scripts. The application of these tools for
basic and applied
research in biology, medicine and agriculture must be addressed by
bioinformatics
training programs. The sum total of these needs amounts to expertise
in design and
use of bioinformatics tools and algorithms, statistics and probability,
computer
programming, data storage and access using database and data warehousing
technologies, data mining and modeling, among others. Knowledge
of the modern
tools of molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics for discovering
the function
and structure of gene products is also necessary. In this talk,
I will give some
examples of training in these areas in plant genome and cancer research
projects.