• Question: what do you think of when people say the word bioinformatics

    Asked by to Claire, Ian, Sergey, Vicky, Zena on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Ian Simpson

      Ian Simpson answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Honestly ? I think “what do you mean?”.

      There probably aren’t too many people that really use that word in a meaningful way anymore and there are endless tedious debates about what the difference is between a computational biologist, a bioinformatician, a systems biologist a mathematical biologist etc. etc.. Something along these lines :-

      http://bit.ly/1kKkweX

      Although you could arrive at some kind of marking out of territory the reality is that the field is so big now that it covers really different things. If I have to pick one, I’m more happy with Computational Biologist because that’s broadly what I identify with. I’m ultimately a Biologist who uses computers to do my research. “Bioinformatics” like “Systems Biology” has really out-grown it’s name. We really all study Biology.

    • Photo: Sergey Lamzin

      Sergey Lamzin answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      I have made an observation at some point. A lot of (apparently very smart folk) use the word bioinformatics without understanding it. Here are a few examples which I have found in the wild:

      Statement: I did some bioinformatics
      Translation: I ran tool X and put 42 in my thesis

      Statement: We did some bioinformatics
      Translation: I had our bioinformatics geeks run tool X, they gave me 42 and I put it in my thesis

      Statement: I ran tool X and got 42
      Translation: I did not understand how 42 came to be, but I still put it in my thesis hoping no one will ask

    • Photo: Vicky Schneider

      Vicky Schneider answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      Lots of information, data about biological systems (from one cell to entire organisms, populations etc) and someone using software and computing to move data around, store it, analyze it and make sense of it all 🙂

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