Wednesday 15 August 2012

Bioinformatics & Computational Biology = same? No. | Building confidence.

looks great as a working definition ... anyone seen a better description? I should print this as a sticker on my cubicle ... I used to be just known as the IT guy in the last company ... 

Computational biology = the study of biology using computational techniques.  The goal is to learn new biology, knowledge about living sytems.  It is about science.

Bioinformatics = the creation of tools (algorithms, databases) that solve problems.  The goal is to build useful tools that work on biological data.  It is about engineering.
http://rbaltman.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/bioinformatics-computational-biology-same-no/

2 comments:

  1. then what's biostatistics, what is the difference between bioinformatics and biostatistics?

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  2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biostatistics
    Biostatistics (a portmanteau of biology and statistics; sometimes referred to as biometry or biometrics) is the application of statistics to a wide range of topics in biology. The science of biostatistics encompasses the design of biological experiments, especially in medicine and agriculture; the collection, summarization, and analysis of data from those experiments; and the interpretation of, and inference from, the results.

    So I would say there's both computational biology and bioinformatics aspects of biostatistics does that make sense? hmmm ..

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