biotech development throughout the world has greatly influenced the different activities of our societyto meet the needs of science and society environment and bioconservation it is one of the best option when classical techniques fail biotechnology startsbioinformatics an interface of biological sciences mathematics physical sciences and computer sciences is all set to revolutionise areas such as agriculture horticulture pharmacy health and nutritionthe subject combines biology mathematics and computer software and involves the use of information technology in studying the life sciencesto understand why bioinformatics can lead to a remarkable change in the way we live we need to take a peek into what determines the way we are to begin with basically we are all made up of proteins for example as enzymes they help in metabolism as keratin it is there in the skin in muscles it helps movement as haemoglobin it carries oxygen etcproteins determine how the organism looks like how it grows fights infections and even how it behaves proteins are made up of amino acidsthe type of protein produced is determined by the way these amino acids are linked which depends on the genetic code or dna dna is a doublestranded molecule that contains all the information required to build control and maintain a living beingit is made up of four chemicals called bases abbreviated as a t c and g a human genome contains nearly three billion pairs of these bases arranged in different patterns the diversity of a living organism is determined by the particular order in which these four chemical bases are arrangedrequirementsto study bioinformatics it is very essential to know the general terminologies involved in computer and biological sciences sequence databases structure databases sequence analysis genome analysis structure predictions molecular modelling genomics and proteomicsone needs to have sound domain knowledge the knowledge of mathematics and computers is integrated into thisall the bioinformatics institutes provide the students with basic knowledge of biology mathematics and computerssubjects include life sciences basics of molecular biology protein synthesis dna fingerprinting etc and in computer science ms office linux html perl etcthus a student who is strong in biology but doesnt have a good idea of computer software will be able to pick up what he lacks similarly for a student who is good in java but has only an interest in life sciences these courses are designed to help him career growth bioinformatics got a big boost with the human genome project it was begun in 1990 as a 15year effortbecause of advances in science the deadline was revised to 2003 and it is now virtually complete two years ahead of schedulethe biggest challenge the project took up was to find out the exact order in which the nearly three billion chemical bases are arranged to form the dnaan understanding of this will help scientists diagnose diseases better and formulate more accurate drugsthe us governments decision to award grants to private companies for research has fuelled the american biotechnology industry in india bangalore is the bioinformatics hubthe