Bioinformatics/Glossary
There are a number of existing Wikipedia articles on bioinformatics and computational biology; the article on biostatistics is also helpful.
There is some disagreement on the proper uses of the following terms. The meanings intended by the author are summarized below:
- Bio-
- Etymology: From the Ancient Greek βίος (bios), “‘life’”.
- Bioinformatics
- The science of the treatment of biological information, especially large quantities of biological information.
- Biological System
- A group of organs or organelles that work together to perform a certain task. (see [Wikipedia Biological System])
- Biological Systems
- A group of biological systems that work together producing an organism ie a living being, ie life
- Biostatistics
- The sub-discipline of Bioinformatics concerned with probability and hypothesis validation on biological data. The term Biostatistics predates "Bioinformatics" considerably.
- Computational Biology
- Computationally-intensive methods to treat biological information. Generally this implies treatment of large amounts of data, but not always.
- Control System
- A device or set of devices to manage, command, direct or regulate the behavior of other devices or systems.
- Control Systems of Biological Systems
- A group of factors working to keep a group of organs balanced and still flexible enough to respond to hostile and variable environments
- Functional Genomics
- The study of functional information derived from entire proteomes; alternatively, high-throughput study of protein functions in general.
- Genome
- All the genes derived from one organism make up a single genome.
- Genomics
- The study of information derived from entire genomes; alternatively, high throughput study of genes in general.
- Informatics
- The science of information, the practice of information processing, and the engineering of information systems.
- Organism
- Any living system (such as animal, plant, fungus, or micro-organism). In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, and maintenance of homeostasis as a stable whole
- Proteome
- All the proteins coded for by the sequences of a single genome, including their structures and functions, make a single proteome.
- Structural Genomics
- The study of structural information derived from entire proteomes; alternatively, high-throughput study of protein structures in general.