What is the Difference Between Bioinformatics and Computational Biology

The key difference between bioinformatics and computational biology is that bioinformatics is a multidisciplinary field that combines biological knowledge with computer programming and large sets of big data, while computational biology is a multidisciplinary field that uses computer science, statistic, and mathematics to help solve problems in biology.

Bioinformatics and computational biology are two important interdisciplinary fields in life sciences. They have already become buzzwords in the science world. A few decades ago, computer science and biology were entirely two different fields. At present, new fields have emerged as a result of the combination of computer science and biology.

CONTENTS

1. Overview and Key Difference
2. What is Bioinformatics 
3. What is Computational Biology
4. Similarities – Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
5. Bioinformatics vs Computational Biology in Tabular Form
6. Summary – Bioinformatics vs Computational Biology

What is Bioinformatics?

Bioinformatics is a multidisciplinary field that merges biological knowledge with computer programming and large sets of big data. It is an interdisciplinary field that makes methods and software tools for understanding large and complex biological data. It is generally useful when dealing with large amounts of data, such as genomic sequencing data.  There is a great deal of overlap between bioinformatics and computational biology. But bioinformatics requires more programming and technical knowledge. In bioinformatics, scientists can interpret the results of more complex research studies. Some well-known examples of bioinformatics include analysis of genetic and genomic data, cheminformatic comparison of proteins to assist personalized medicine, prediction of protein function from data sequence and structural information, etc.

Figure 01: Bioinformatics

Moreover, in bioinformatics, a genome browser is a graphical interface that helps to display information from a biological database. Genome browsers enable scientists to visualize and browse entire genomes with annotated data that include gene prediction and structure, proteins, expression regulation, variation and comparative analysis. The best-known genomic browsers are UCSC genome browser, Ensembl genome browser, and NCBI’s genome data viewer. In bioinformatics, there are also well-known protein browsers that help researchers predict protein structure and function, such as Uniprot, Swissprot, etc.

What is Computational Biology?

Computational biology is a multidisciplinary field that uses computer science, statistic, and mathematics to help solve problems in biology. Computational biology uses mathematical and computational approaches to address experimental and theoretical queries in biology. It can also include the development of algorithms, theoretical models, computational simulation, and mathematical models.

Figure 02: Computational Biology

Though computational biology relies on computers, it usually does not use a lot of machine learning and other more recent development in computing. Furthermore, computational biology concerns all parts of biology that are not wrapped up in big data. Currently, one of the most popular applications of computational biology is computer-based mathematical modelling to understand disease patterns.

What are the Similarities Between Bioinformatics and Computational Biology?

• Bioinformatics and computational biology are two important interdisciplinary fields in life sciences.
• Both fields use the knowledge of computer science, mathematics, and statistic in order to interpret the biological research outcomes.
• Both fields are new emerging life sciences.
• They are both interrelated.
• Both fields are often integrated into laboratories, research centres, and colleges.

What is the Difference Between Bioinformatics and Computational Biology?

Bioinformatics is a multidisciplinary field that combines biological knowledge with computer programming and large sets of big data, while computational biology is a multidisciplinary field that uses computer science, statistic, and mathematics to help solve problems in biology. So, this is the key difference between bioinformatics and computational biology. Bioinformatics requires more programming and technical knowledge than computational biology.

The following infographic lists the differences between bioinformatics and computational biology in tabular form for side by side comparison.

Summary – Bioinformatics vs Computational Biology

Bioinformatics and computational biology are two important interrelated fields in life sciences. Bioinformatics is a field that combines biological knowledge with computer programming and large sets of big data. Computational biology is a field that uses computer science, statistic, and mathematics to help solve problems in biology. Thus, this is the key difference between bioinformatics and computational biology.

Reference:

1. “Bioinformatics” An Overview | ScienceDirect Topics.
2. “What Is Computational Biology?” School of Computer Science – Carnegie Mellon University.

Image Courtesy:

1. “A-Quick-Guide-for-Computer-Assisted-Instruction-in-Computational-Biology-and-Bioinformatics-pcbi.1000035.g001”  By Costa M, Galembeck E, Marson G, Torres B – Image file from Costa M, Galembeck E, Marson G, Torres B (2008). PLOS Computational Biology. DOI:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000035. PMID 18437234. PMC: 2324196. (CC BY 3.0) via Commons Wikimedia
2. “Network-driven linear discriminative model”  By Emmanuel Barillot, Laurence Calzone, Philippe Hupé, Jean-Philippe Vert, Andrei Zinovyev, Computational Systems Biology of Cancer Chapman & Hall/CRC Mathematical & Computational Biology , 2012 (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Commons Wikimedia

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