From Sequence Analysis to Application: Role of Bioinformatics to Understand Biological Systems

The field of biological sciences enumerates various important aspects of life forms, some of which remain mysterious to explain or validate. Though there has been a revolutionary advancement of tools and techniques to study different biological phenomena under laboratory conditions, there are significant limitations with implementing each concept in the laboratory. Sometimes, it is practically impossible to simulate the actual environmental conditions of living systems under in-vitro settings, or sometimes the requirements of life are discordant with various analytical techniques, or the study of complex evolutionary processes becomes technically difficult using wet-lab methods. Thus, these experimental challenges confine our boundary to explore the real world of biological systems, which may lead to the acquisition of knowledge with few lacunae. Bioinformatics as a discipline tries to fill those spaces to a major extent using in silico analysis and provides a deeper theoretical foundation and validation of existing biological principles. The importance and potential of bioinformatics have been witnessed in the pandemic times to fight against Covid-19. From developing new drugs and vaccines to crop improvement and space and environment studies, the field of bioinformatics has many prospects. This article aims to provide a bird’s-eye view of different applications and cutting-edge bioinformatics approaches to understand biological systems and the emerging need to integrate this course into the education framework.