Abstract

Kamel A. Abd-Elsalam

 DNA sequencing is the deciphering of hereditary information. It is an indispensable prerequisite for many biotechnical applications and technologies and the continual acquisition of genomic information is very important. This opens the door not only for further research and better understanding of the architectural plan of life, but also for future clinical diagnosis based on the genetic data of individuals. Bioinformatics can be broadly defined as the creation and development of advanced information and computational techniques for problems in biology. More narrowly, bioinformatics is the set of computing techniques used to manage and extract useful information from the DNA/RNA/protein sequence data being generated (at high volumes) by automated techniques (e.g. DNA sequencers, DNA microarrays) and stored in large public databases (e.g. GenBank, Protein DataBank). Certain method for analyzing genetic/protein data has been found to be extremely computationally intensive, providing motivation for the use of powerful computers. The advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web has substantially increased the availability of information and computational resources available to experimental biologists. This review will describe the current on-line resources available, including protein and nucleic acids sequence alignment.