Bioinformatics

OVERVIEW OF BIOINFORMATICS AND ITS RELEVANCE TO AGRICULTURE
Introduction
Biology is one important branch of sciences which was being shifted by computing technology. This field has been rapidly becoming much more computational and analytical. Bioinformatics has been defined as a means for analyzing, comparing, graphically displaying, modeling, storing, systemizing, searching, and ultimately distributing biological information which includes various parts such as sequences, structures and functions. Thus bioinformatics was defined as a discipline that generates computational tools, databases, and methods to support genomic and post-genomic research in the future. It includes the study of DNA structure and function, gene and protein expression, protein production, structure and function, genetic regulatory systems, and clinical applications. It is also known as computational biology which means the development and application of analytical data and theoretical methods, mathematical modeling and computational simulation techniques to the study of biological, behavioral, and social systems.
Bioinformatics derives knowledge from computer analysis of biological data. These can consist of the information stored in the genetic code, experimental results from various sources, patient statistics, and scientific literature. Research in bioinformatics includes method development for storage, retrieval, and analysis of the data. Bioinformatics is also synonym for computational molecular biology - the use of computers to characterize the molecular components of living things. The result is that computers are being used to gather, store, analyze and merge biological data. Bioinformatics or computational biology is the use of mathematical and informational techniques, including statistics, to solve biological problems, usually by creating or using computer programs, mathematical models or both. One of the main parts of bioinformatics is the data mining and analysis of the data gathered by the various genome projects. Other areas are sequence alignment, protein structure prediction, interactions between various proteins and virtual evolution.
Bioinformatics is currently defined as the study of information content and information flow in biological systems and processes. It has evolved to serve as the bridge between data observations in diverse biologically-related disciplines and the derivations of understanding about how the systems or processes and the application function.

Discussion
As a discipline that builds upon the basic sciences, bioinformatics depends on a strong foundation of chemistry, biochemistry, biophysics, biology, genetics, and molecular biology which allows interpretation of biological data in a meaningful context. Bioinformatics applies these fields in ways that provide insight to make the vast, diverse, and complex life sciences data more understandable and useful, to uncover new biological insights and to provide new perspectives to determine combining principles and also various fields such as pharmaceuticals, medical, agriculture and proteomics.
Agro-informatics or agricultural informatics concentrates on the aspects of bioinformatics dealing with plant genomes which are important for modern plant biotechnology. Plant life plays important and diverse roles in our society, economy and our global environment. Besides, crop is the most important plants for human. The predictive manipulation of plant growth will affect agriculture at a time when food security, decrease of lands available for agricultural use, stewardship of the environment, and climate change are all issues of growing public concern.
Nowadays, crop yields have increased and will continue in order to improve breeding and development of new biotechnological engineered strategies. The onset of genomics is providing enormous information to improve plants especially crop phenotypes. The accumulation of sequence data allows detailed genome analysis by using friendly database access and information retrieval. Genetic and molecular genome allows efficient transfer of data revealing extensive conservation of genome organization between species.
The information about genes enables new strategies to study gene expression patterns in plants. Available information from news technologies as the database stored DNA microarray expression data will help plant biology functional genomics. Crop plant networks collections of databases and bioinformatics resources for crop plants genomics have been built to connect the extensive work in genome mapping. This resource facilitates the identification of agronomically important genes by comparative analysis between crop plants and model species, allowing the genetic engineering of crop plants selected by the quality of the resulting products.
Bioinformatics resources have evolved, developing new nutritional genomics biotechnology tools to genetically modify and improve food supply, for an increasing world population and it is important to solve unanswered research questions on the mechanisms of plant development. Therefore, bioinformatics can now be controlled to accelerate the translation of basic discovery to agriculture.

Conclusion
In conclusion, bioinformatics plays important roles in developing incoming technologies for been determined in fields that critically vital especially agriculture. This is because plants and crop are very important for living things as they obtain sources of food, nutrients and also oxygen. The application of bioinformatics can help in altering some characteristics of these plants and crop in order to develop new useful agricultural products. The confluence of biology and computer science can be used up as the applications of molecular biology to draw a greater attention among the life science researchers and scientists. As it becomes very important for biologists to seek the help of information technology professionals to accomplish the growing computational requirements of a host of exciting and needy biological problems, the synergy between modern biology and computer science is to blossom in the future. Thus the research scope for all the mathematical techniques and algorithms coupled with software programming languages, software development and deployment tools are to get a real boost. In addition, information technologies such as databases, middleware, graphical user interface (GUI) design, distributed object computing, data compression, network and communication and remote management are all set to play a very critical role in taking forward the goals for which the bioinformatics field came into existence.