Technology or method
Protein structure prediction
Predicting a protein's three-dimensional shape from its sequence. AlphaFold made accurate predictions possible for many proteins.
Bioinformatics
Using computers to store, search and analyze biological data such as DNA and protein sequences.Source: NHGRI
Technology or method
How Bioinformatics connects
Bioinformatics includes the example
Technology or method
Sequence alignment
Lining up DNA or protein sequences to find similarities. Dynamic programming finds the best global or local alignment.
Bioinformatics includes
Technology or method
Biological databases
Public archives such as GenBank for sequences, UniProt for proteins and the Protein Data Bank for structures.
Bioinformatics is used by
Idea or model
Human genome
The full DNA sequence of a human. Drafts were published in 2001, and the first gap-free sequence in 2022.
Bioinformatics is related to
Technology or method
DNA sequencing
Reading the order of the bases in DNA, from single genes to whole genomes.
Studied in
Your progress
Sources & further reading
The explanations on this page are our own summaries of these sources. Follow a link to read the original; if anything here disagrees with it, the original wins. How we choose and check sources.
Bioinformatics (opens the original in a new tab)
National Human Genome Research Institute. Talking Glossary of Genomic and Genetic Terms. National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH.
ReferenceGovernment sourceEducational