Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
2
Making Knowledge
How can we characterize bioinformatics? What makes
it distinct from other kinds of biology? In chapter 1, I
described how computers emerged as a crucial tool for
managing data in the 1980s and 1990s. This chapter fol-
lows that historical trajectory forward to the present,
describing bioinformatic work in action. When I spoke
to biologists in seminars and labs, I posed the question,
“What is bioinformatics?” The answers were both uncer-
tain and widely varied. Some saw it as a description for
the future of all biology, other as an outdated term for a
quietly dying fi eld. Some understood it as a limited set
of tools for genome-centric biology, others as anything
that had to do with biology and computers. Some told me
that it was of marginal importance to “real” biology, oth-
ers that it was crucial to all further progress in the fi eld.
Some saw it as asking fundamentally new sorts of ques-
tions, others saw it as the same old biology dressed up in
computer language. Such confusion immediately piques
curiosity: Why should a fi eld evoke such contradictory
responses? What could be at stake in the defi nition of
bioinformatics?
These contestations hide deeper controversies about
the institutional and professional forms that biology will
take in the coming decades. Who gets money, who gets
credit, who gets promoted, how will students be trained—
