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Bioinformatics & Systems Biology

Table of contents

Bioinformatics & Systems Biology at UCD

Language: English Studies in English
Subject area: biology
University website: www.ucd.ie/

Definitions and quotes

Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics ( listen) is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combines biology, computer science, mathematics and statistics to analyze and interpret biological data. Bioinformatics has been used for in silico analyses of biological queries using mathematical and statistical techniques.
Biology
Biology is the natural science that involves the study of life and living organisms, including their physical structure, chemical composition, function, development and evolution. Modern biology is a vast field, composed of many branches. Despite the broad scope and the complexity of the science, there are certain unifying concepts that consolidate it into a single, coherent field. Biology recognizes the cell as the basic unit of life, genes as the basic unit of heredity, and evolution as the engine that propels the creation of new species. Living organisms are open systems that survive by transforming energy and decreasing their local entropy to maintain a stable and vital condition defined as homeostasis. See glossary of biology.
Systems Biology
Systems biology is the computational and mathematical modeling of complex biological systems. It is a biology-based interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on complex interactions within biological systems, using a holistic approach (holism instead of the more traditional reductionism) to biological research.
Biology
Any competent biologist is aware of a multitude of problems yet unresolved and of questions yet unanswered. After all, biologic research shows no sign of approaching completion; quite the opposite is true. Disagreements and clashes of opinion are rife among biologists, as they should be in a living and growing science. Antievolutionists mistake, or pretend to mistake, these disagreements as indications of dubiousness of the entire doctrine of evolution. Their favorite sport is stringing together quotations, carefully and sometimes expertly taken out of context, to show that nothing is really established or agreed upon among evolutionists. Some of my colleagues and myself have been amused and amazed to read ourselves quoted in a way showing that we are really antievolutionists under the skin.
Theodosius Dobzhansky (1973) Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution, 1973 [1]
Biology
Today, the central and still fascinating questions for biologists concern the mechanisms by which evolution occurs."
Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes, Biology 5th ed. 1989, Worth Publishers, p. 972
Biology
Purpose has no place in biology, but history has no meaning without it.
George Kubler The Shape of Time, 1982, p. 8
Metals released into the atmosphere from human activities pose a significant risk to ecosystems and human health. Small airborne particles with a diameter of less than 10 microns can be inhaled and then absorbed into the alveolar tissue of the lungs, resulting in damage.
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