Biology Databases for the New Life Sciences

SUMMARY

Hundreds of publicly-accessible biology data sites have appeared in the last twenty years. Sequence, microarray, and protein structure data are now stored in large complex databases. Bioinformatics, the computational manipulation of data to derive meaningful information, has emerged as a distinct field. Bioinformatics combines the subject expertise of the biologists with the data handling expertise of the computer scientists. There are information-science issues associated with these data: the databasing of information, the heterogeneity of the data, the complexity of the databases, the range of audiences being served, and the emergence of database standards. Librarians can make contributions in this developing area.

Key Words:

• Databases
• genomics
• bioinformatics
• microarrays