COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY

Computational biology is an interdisciplinary field that applies the techniques of computer science, applied mathematics, and statistics to address biological questions. OR is also interdisciplinary and applies the same mathematical and computational sciences, but to decision-making problems. Both focus on developing mathematical models and designing algorithms to solve them. Models in computational biology vary in their biological domain and can range from the interactions of genes and proteins to the relationships among organisms and species. Genes are stretches of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which is sometimes called the User Manual for Life " and is a double-stranded helix of nucleic acids bonded by base-pairs of complements (a-t, c-g). The central dogma of molecular biology asserts that information in a cell flows from DNA to ribonucleic acid (RNA) to protein (note, Francis Crick used `dogma ' when he introduced this in 1958 to mean `without foundation ' because there was no experimental evidence at that time). Proteins are the workers of the cell, and there is much focus on recognizing, predicting, and comparing their properties. Figure 1: Central Dogma of Molecular Biology Proteins interact either directly by modifying each other's properties through direc