The Protein Circular Dichroism Data Bank (PCDDB) has been in operation for more than 5 years as a public repository for archiving circular dichroism spectroscopic data and associated bioinformatics and experimental metadata. Since its inception, many improvements and new developments have been made in data display, searching algorithms, data formats, data content, auxillary information, and val...

The Cyanophages are the phages infecting cyanobacteria. They are potential agents for the horizontal gene transfer. The complete genome of 10 known Cyanophages deciphered the presence of various gene sequences for hypothetical proteins whose functions are not yet understood. Our attempt is to predict the structure and function of these hypothetical proteins by the application of computational m...

To access up-to-date biological data sources across multiple heterogeneous databases and analysis tools distributed all over the networks, and to combine them into workflows, we propose a grid-based system for integrating bioinformatics applications, which we named “Bioinformatics: Ask Any Questions (BAAQ)”. BAAQ allows scientists to store and manage biological data and bioinformatics tools as ...

Recently, Docker technology has received increasing attention throughout the bioinformatics community. However, its implementation has not yet been mastered by most biologists; accordingly, its application in biological research has been limited. In order to popularize this technology in the field of bioinformatics and to promote the use of publicly available bioinformatics tools, such as Docke...

The Bioinformatics Links Directory, http://bioinformatics.ca/links_directory/, is an online resource for public access to all of the life science research web servers published in this and previous issues of Nucleic Acids Research, together with other useful tools, databases and resources for bioinformatics and molecular biology research. Dependent on community input and development, the Bioinf...

Bioinformatics is the field dedicated mainly to the development and use of computational methods and tools for the understanding of biological data and information, and holds great promise for poverty alleviation and disease control. Developed countries have invested generously in the research and development of bioinformatics. Developing countries must follow suite. These countries should setu...

Cross-domain Beginner 1 hour This course will give you a broad overview of how bioinformatics can enable bench-based research. It is aimed at experimental researchers in the molecular life sciences who have little or no previous experience of using bioinformatics databases or tools. An undergraduate degree in a subject related to the molecular life sciences would be an advantage. Image courtesy...

Clinical bioinformatics provides biological and medical information to allow for individualized healthcare. In this review, we describe the uses of clinical bioinformatics. After the analysis of the complete human genome sequences, clinical bioinformatics enables researchers to search online biological databases and use the biological information in their medical practices. The data obtained fr...

DNA is continuously exposed to many different damaging agents such as environmental chemicals, UV light, ionizing radiation, and reactive cellular metabolites. DNA lesions can result in different phenotypical consequences ranging from a number of diseases, including cancer, to cellular malfunction, cell death, or aging. To counteract the deleterious effects of DNA damage, cells have developed v...

Bioinformatics tools have been recently applied to study the differentiation of the mammalian oocyte during folliculogenesis. In this review, we will summarize our knowledge of 1) the use of biological databases for the extraction of relevant information, 2) bioinformatics methods for knowledge extraction and representation, 3) the application of these methods to the study of mammalian oocyte d...