Understanding bioinformatics, the key to unlocking our genetic secrets – Times of Malta

In the age of Big Data and Digital Everything, computers, specialised software, and the Internet have become essential tools in every researchers toolkit to accelerate and assist in their research initiatives. In molecular biology, bioinformatics is the driving force behind the researchers endeavours to continue unravelling the secrets behind the genetic code, together with the forces and factors underlying a living organism.

So what is bioinformatics? Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field which typically combines computer science along with statistical analysis to predict, treat and solve biological problems. The origin of bioinformatics dates back to the early 1960s, when Margaret Dayhoff and Robert Ledley published a paper describing a computer program called COMPROTEIN, coded in Fortran on punch cards for the IBM 7090 Mainframes, to aid in protein-structure determination.

Advancements in high-throughput sequencing technology, coupled with reduced costs and turnaround time, has seen an exponential increase in the generation and availability of genomic data. Yet, this was also accompanied by computational and data storage challenges. Aided with the widespread availability of the Internet, bioinformatics has created advanced ways to store, organise, explore, extract, annotate and visualise complex data, while requiring constant updating to standardise new resources to ensure their sustainability and ease of use.

Bioinformatics featured heavily in the COVID-19 pandemic, both in the detection and treatment of different SARS-CoV-2 variants. Lung fluid samples were taken from patients with severe respiratory symptoms. The samples DNA was sequenced, followed by bioinformatics processing that helped to filter out known human and microbial DNA, and to assemble the then unknown SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequence. The whole process took 10 days to complete and the newly assembled sequence was compared to other known sequences and was classified as a coronavirus closely related to a strain found in bats.

The applications of bioinformatics also extend to the identification of disease-causing genetic defects, prognosis and drug discovery, among others. If the disease is genetic in nature, it is first connected to the causative genetic alteration. The next step would be to identify a drug target (usually a protein) which would restore normal cellular function or eliminate the malfunctioning cells. The drug would then have to be filtered from a list of all possibilities based on the drug target.

The importance of bioinformatics in this day and age must be accompanied by skilled bioinformaticians to keep up with this fast-paced field. The Masters in Bioinformatics offered by the Centre for Molecular Medicine and Biobanking at the University of Malta is an interdisciplinary program that combines the application of computer technologies to the handling and analysis of biological data. The course provides the essential knowledge to develop new algorithms and apply the latest technologies in order to process biological data generated from experiments. This program is particularly suited to those with a biology or medical science background seeking to acquire computer programming skills, or vice versa.

Tristan Camilleri, Donald Friggieri, and Matthew Pace are enrolled in the MSc in Bioinformatics programme at the University of Malta.

Sound Bites

The largest-ever genetic study of schizophrenia has identified large numbers of specific genes that could play important roles in the psychiatric disorder. A group of hundreds of researchers across 45 countries analysed DNA from 76,755 people with schizophrenia and 243,649 without it to better understand the genes and biological processes underpinning the condition. The new study found a much larger number of genetic links to schizophrenia than ever before, in 287 different regions of the genome, the human bodys DNA blueprint.

Scientists have published the first complete, gapless sequence of a human genome, two decades after the Human Genome Project produced the first draft human genome sequence. According to researchers, having a complete, gap-free sequence of the roughly three billion bases (or letters) in our DNA is critical for understanding the full spectrum of human genomic variation and for understanding the genetic contributions to certain diseases.

For more soundbites, listen to Radio Mocha every Saturday at 7.30pm on Radju Malta and the following Monday at 9pm on Radju Malta 2 https://www.fb. com/RadioMochaMalta/.

DIDYOU KNOW?

In the early years of the BBC, there was a framed warning near the microphone in the radio studio that read: If you sneeze or rustle papers you will DEAFEN THOUSANDS!!!

Venereal diseases are named after Venus, the Roman

goddess of love. Greeks call them aphrodisiac diseases ( ) after Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love.

Caesars Palace in Las Vegas was built with such a large car park that it used to host Formula One races.

The first Met Office weather forecast took six weeks to come up with and only predicted the following six hours.

For more trivia, see: http://www.um.edu.mt/think.

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Understanding bioinformatics, the key to unlocking our genetic secrets - Times of Malta