Date: Jan. 24, 2002
Link: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/bioskills/chapter/ch01.html
Source Author or Organization: Cynthia Gibas, Per Jambeck, O'Reilly & Associates

Biology in the Computer Age is a chapter excerpted from the O'Reilly & Associates book Developing Bioinformatics Computer Skills, by Cynthia Gibas and Per Jambeck. The chapter begins with a look back to Biology's first "information age" in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the primary goal was classification of all organisms, then examines how the intersection of Mathematics, Computer Science and Biology are currently transforming biological research.

Gibas and Jambeck explore the ways new techniques for analyzing massive amounts of data are being applied to the current goal of reading the complete genomes of living things, with the ability to "understand how life works at the highest possible resolution" and use that knowledge to predict structure and function.

Also examined for readers new to or interested in entering the field are the skills required of the modern Bioinformatician and recommendations for data collection and for selecting suitable hardware, databases, operating system, additional software and programming languages.