Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
First, it makes clear the importance of sequence and sequencing: the
growth of sequence created a glut of data that had to be managed. The
computerization of biology was closely associated with the prolifera-
tion of sequences; sequences were the kinds of objects that could be
manipulated and interrogated using computers. Second, the growing
importance of sequences increased the need for data management. The
design of computers was suited to knowledge making through the man-
agement and analysis of large data sets.
Disciplinary Origins of Bioinformatics
In the 1980s, due to the perseverance of Ostell and others like him,
computers began to become more prevalent in biological work. The
individuals who used these machines brought with them commitments
to statistical and data management approaches originating in physics.
During the 1990s, the use of computers in biology grew into a rec-
ognized and specialized set of skills for managing and analyzing large
volumes of data.
The
Oxford English Dictionary
now attributes the fi rst use of the
term “bioinformatics” to Paulien Hogeweg in 1978, but there is a
strong case to be made that the discipline, as a recognized subfi eld of
biology, did not come into existence until the early 1990s.
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Searching
PubMed—a comprehensive online citation database for the biomedical
sciences—for the keyword “bioinformatics” from 1982 to 2008 sug-
gests that the fi eld did not grow substantially until about 1992 (fi g-
ure 1.1). Although this is not a perfect indicator, it suffi ces to show the
general trend.
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From a trickle of publications in the late 1980s, the early
1990s saw an increase to several hundred papers per year (about one
paper per day). This number remained relatively steady from 1992 to
1998, when the fi eld underwent another period of rapid growth, up to
about ten thousand papers per year (about twenty-seven papers per
day) in 2005.
The late 1980s and early 1990s also saw the founding of several
key institutions, including the NCBI in 1988 and the European Bio-
informatics Institute in 1993. In 1990 and 1991, the Spring Symposia
on Artifi cial Intelligence and Molecular Biology were held at Stanford.
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Lawrence E. Hunter, a programmer at the National Library of Medicine
(NLM), was one of the organizers: “It was really hard to fi nd people
who did this work in either computer science or molecular biology.
No one cared about bioinformatics or had any idea of what it was or
how to fi nd people who did it.”
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In 1992, Hunter used publications
