Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
those of pre-informatic biology. Most importantly, these practices al-
low biologists to pose and answer
general
questions. Lab bench ex-
perimentation usually permits biologists to study only a single gene,
a single cell, or a single protein at once. The availability, scope, and
shape of data enable questions focused on whole genomes, or hundreds
of proteins, or many organisms at once. This is accomplished through
the use of statistical methods and approaches: large amounts of data
are analyzed and understood
statistically
. These two elements—general
questions and statistical approaches—mark a major break with non-
bioinformatic or pre-informatic biology. Some of biologists' concerns
about this transformation to bioinformatic biology are manifest in de-
bates about “hypothesis-free” or “data-driven” biology.
Divisions of Labor
Where does bioinformatics fi t within the fi eld of biology? There is a
diversity of ways in which the management of data fi gures in biologi-
cal work. Figure 2.1 shows one practitioner's representation of the dis-
ciplinary topography. “Biology” includes both computational biology
and “systems biology,” which overlap with each other. These fi elds are
largely distinct from “informatics,” which is broken down into informat-
ics proper (“methods/tools for management and analysis of informa-
tion/data”) and “bioinformatics” (“development of methods for analy-
sis of biological data”). Both of these fi elds intersect with computational
biology, defi ned as “computational/modeling/analytical approaches to
address biological questions.” Cutting across all these subdisciplines are
the fi elds of “synthetic biology” and “biological engineering.”
This fi gure represents a particular perspective on a messy and com-
plicated landscape; other biologists would no doubt have their own ver-
sions. Bioinformatics is multiple and heterogeneous—not a single entity,
but a multitude of different practices. Characterizing it in full requires
attending to different scenes and spaces where bioinformatics is taking
place. What are those places? First, bioinformatics occupies traditional
academic spaces, usually in biology departments, but sometimes distrib-
uted between computer science, engineering, chemistry, mathematics,
statistics, and medical faculties. Second, semiprivate research institutes
such as the Broad Institute and the J. Craig Venter Institute support
their own bioinformatic work. Third, government-funded laboratories
such as the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) or
the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) have bioinformatics as their
primary research agendas. Finally, large pharmaceutical companies have
