Bioinformatics is a new, highly interdisciplinary, scientific discipline that has arisen from a confluence of modern biology, computer science, and mathematics. It employs sophisticated computational methods to assist in understanding and applying structural and functional information about biologically important content that resides in a variety of accessible databases.

The content of Bioinformatics databases is very diverse, including

• Nucleic acid sequences
• Protein sequences
• Molecular structures, both large and small
• Clinical images
• Experimental images like those derived from micorarray analyses

Spring, 2004. Bioinformatics students use look at peptide - antibody interaction. Learn more about it..

Using bioinformatics, scientists gather, store, analyze and integrate biological data that can then be used for gene discovery, study of relationships between structure and function of genes and proteins, gene activity in health and disease, drug discovery, and clinical diagnoses. The information obtained by the application of this powerful new technology can be applied to prevent, diagnose and treat disease, design new drugs or vaccines, shorten the development cycle of new medicines and much more.

UMDNJ was especially fortunate in 2001 to have been awarded a High Technology Workforce Enhancement grant from the Comission on Higher Education of the State of New Jersey that permitted it to initiate its GSBS concentration in Bioinformatics.

Find out about the huge demand for people trained in Bioinformatics and, specifically, what we're doing about Bioinformatics at UMDNJ.

In summary, we are particularly interested in Bioinformatics' role in the biomedical sciences and the future of clinical care. We fully expect that molecular medicine and informatics will lead to better and more customized medicines to detect, prevent and cure diseases, exciting new ways to leverage data derived from rapid genomic sequencing, and deeper insight into the dynamics of the cell. Overall, these successes will profoundly impact efforts as diverse as biodefense and research into emerging infectious diseases.