By Abdul Qadir Qureshi
(Pakistan News & Features
Services)
The scope and
importance of bioinformatics as an emerging science and its future were
highlighted in the first of the lecture series organized by
the bioinformatics department of the Sir Syed University of Engineering
& Technology (SSUET), Karachi.
Dr
Reazuddin, Assistant Professor, Dr Panjwani Center for Molecular Medicine and
Drug Research, International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences,
University of Karachi, was the guest speaker on the occasion.
Bioinformatics is an
interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for
understanding biological data.
Bioinformatics is the application of
computer technology to the management of biological information. It combines computer
science, molecular biology, statistics, tmathematics andengineering to
study and process biological data
The technology is versatile and can
be applied whenever gene, protein and cell research are used for the discovery
of a new drug or a new herbicide/herbicide-resistant crop combination. Without
bioinformatics, new research in most fields of medicine and biology would come
to a standstill.
Focusing on “Bioinformatics
and its applications in Biology Research”, Dr Reazuddin said that the explosive
growth of biological information has resulted from many advances in the
scientific fields and Bioinformatics is one of them in which by the advancement
in computer technology, different sophisticated techniques and equipment used
to carry out rapid genome sequencing.
He highlighted the importance of the
field having the generous job opportunities in Pakistan and abroad.
“After graduation, the students of
Bioinformatics have the chance to work as researcher in different departments
like pharmaceutical, software houses, hospitals and academic and research
institutions, and they have an open sky of opportunities,” Dr Reaz said.
The chairman of the department, Prof
Dr Hilal Qureshi and its incharge, Uzma Mahmood. also spoke on the occasion and
appreciated the series of lectures for being informative to the students
seeking their career in the field of bioinformatics.
