SEQUENCE RETRIEVAL AND ANALYSIS: A USEFUL TOOL IN BIOINFORMATICS – A REVIEW

Essien Okon*, Mary Esien Kooffreh, Anthony John Umoyen, Peter Nkachukwu Chukwurah,
Ekeoma Malvina Nwankpa and Nwagu Kingsley Ekene

ABSTRACT

Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary scientific field that develops methods for storing, retrieving, organizing and analyzing biological data. A major activity in bioinformatics is to develop software tools to generate useful biological knowledge. Bioinformatics uses computers to better understand biology. Bioinformatics as a science can provide input to all previously mentioned scientific fields, as the recording and processing of detailed biological data is the first step towards doing something with them. Bioinformatics uses many areas of computer science, statistics, mathematics and engineering to process biological data. Complex machines are used to read in biological data at a much faster rate than before. Databases and information systems are used to store and organize biological data. Analyzing biological data may involve algorithms in artificial intelligence, soft computing, data mining, image processing, and simulation. The algorithms in turn depend on theoretical foundations such as discrete mathematics, control theory, system theory, information theory, and statistics. Commonly used software tools and technologies in the field include Java, C#, XML, Perl, C, C++, Python, R, SQL, CUDA, MATLAB, and spreadsheet applications. The aim and purpose of this present review is to discuss and expound on sequence retrieval and analysis as one of the basic and fundamental tools used in the study of Bioinformatics.

Keywords: Bioinformatics, sequence alignment, sequence retrieval and analysis.