Bioinformatics is about using mathematics, statistics and information technology to extract useful information from large and complex biological datasets.
Biological experiments can generate large amounts of data. Bioinformatics is about acquiring, managing, analysing and understanding that data.
An effective bioinformatics strategy prevents research organisations from drowning in their data and enables them to extract valuable information from it.
In health and medical fields, bioinformatics enables advances in areas such as:
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drug discovery
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diagnostics
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disease management.
At CSIRO we have developed a range of new bioinformatics methods based on our statistical and computational expertise.
We are applying these new methods to:
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diagnose cancer subtypes
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predict survival time of cancer patients
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identify the mode of action of candidate drugs
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model protein binding
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model drug target properties.
Statistical tools for bioinformatics
CSIRO statisticians have developed a suite of statistical techniques for analysing the sort of data where the number of measurements of each sample is vastly greater than the number of samples. These ‘massively multivariate’ datasets can’t be analysed by traditional methods.
Bioinformatics research at CSIRO enables advances in areas such as drug discovery, diagnostics and disease management.
Massively multivariate data is generated by a range of experiments in biology including:
Our statistical techniques have applications in:
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drug discovery
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personalised medicine
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clinical diagnostics.
Computational tools for bioinformatics
CSIRO has developed a powerful software modeling tool, MolSAR™, which has the potential to dramatically reduce drug development costs.
MolSAR can be used to extract useful information from large quantities of data, such as from pharmacological experiments, which can then be used in the drug discovery process. It can also search through existing collections of chemicals to find new drug leads and help design new chemical collections which have a higher likelihood of containing good drug leads.
Find out about CSIRO's Smart Statistics for Bioinformatics.
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