Postgraduate Degree Course in Bioinformatics

These pages describe the Masters course in Bioinformatics in Glasgow University. What is bioinformatics, and what does a bioinformatician do?

In its broadest sense bioinformatics is the application of computational techniques to biological problems. However the growth of this subject in recent years can be ascribed to the need to tackle problems arising from the advances in genome sequencing. These lend themselves to computational approaches for two main reasons. First, there is cryptic information inherent in nucleic acid and protein sequences for which computational analysis is particularly appropriate. Second, the data generated by the genome sequencing projects — and by the experimental techniques that analyse them — are so extensive that computational methods are needed to handle them, and database technology is needed to manage them.

The bioinformatician can be regarded as the professional who understands the language of both experimental biologist and computing scientist, and can bridge the gap between them. He can advise the biologist on what computational resources are most appropriate to solve a particular problem and how best to use them, and can interpret a biological problem to the software engineer. The bioinformatician himself will have the skills to design and manage databases, perform general programming tasks, and construct web interfaces to software and database resources.