Bioinformatics: An Effective Teaching Resource in Biological Sciences

Abstract

The world is strongly moving towards technological innovation and every field is undergoing revolutionary changes. Recent years have witnessed emergence of bioinformatics and data science as a necessity in almost all fields including biological science.  If we look at the course structure of basic science, bioinformatics teaching hardly finds place in the programme structure specifically at the undergraduate levels. However, bioinformatics can be one of the courses at undergraduate level and it can be used for regular teaching as well. Bioinformatics envisages processing, storing and retrieving biological data. This has been very well supported by the development of algorithms for analysing biological data.  Teaching basic bioinformatics as an interdisciplinary course at undergraduate level and making its use in teaching specific topics like genetics and molecular biology will enhance the competency of young graduates. The present paper provides a review of use of biological data and its applications to gain insights in core concepts of biological sciences. It also proves to be a valuable tool in performing sequence alignments, annotation and establishing relationships between different genomes/ species. All these tools taught will help graduates in their academic progression.