Research Paper on BioInformatics
What is BioInformatics? The use of technology in collecting and analyzing genetic information. Ex. deCODE genetics Maintains a genetic database of information from every resident in Iceland
GenBank (NCBI) Large quantities of genetic information are stored in genetic databases such as the GenBank These are billions of nucleotides sequences compiled together from a population
Annotation The analysis of the information being stored in the databases Without analysis, the stored information has no value BLAST
What is BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool)? A software which locates specific genes from a very large database of information using already identified genetic sequences Uses a similarity index (Sum of identical sequences/total number of sequences)
Focus: The mechanism of BLAST I will focus heavily on the computing algorithm used by the BLAST software to identify key genetic sequences from a very large database of random nucleotide sequences I will research how popular/ influential BLAST is in the genetic research community vs. other methods Thus, I will briefly compare BLAST with other methods of analyzing genetic sequences Analysis of Human Genome is key to finding cures to diseases and also to better understand epigenetics
Presentation/Challenges Will present my findings on BLAST and its influence on the field of genetics Challenges: I don’t have a strong background in CS.