Summary
- Bioinformatics is central to molecular life-science research.
- Public databases such as those available on the EMBL-EBI website provide open access to a wealth of biological information, allowing you to perform in silico experiments without needing to write any code.
- The essentials of a robust bioinformatics resource are a well-thought-out database structure and adherence to community standards; it helps to have a basic awareness of these two core principles of a public data resource as this will enable you to navigate your way round the world of databases, and communicate with bioinformatics experts, more effectively.
- Bioinformatics is an experimental science: it’s important to give careful consideration to the method that you use, and to build in controls exactly as you would for a wet-lab experiment.
- Bioinformatics experiments can broadly be categorised as
– Search
– Compare
– Model
– Integrate