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It seems imminent, if not already true, that Biology and Computers are becoming close cousins which are mutually respecting, helping and influencing each other and synergistically merging, more than ever. The flood of data from Biology, mainly in the form of DNA, RNA and Protein sequences, is putting heavy demand on computers and computational scientists. At the same time, it is demanding a transformation of basic ethos of biological sciences. A common misconception is that bio-informatics is about creating and managing bio-data bases. Nothing would be farther from the truth. Fine analytical and engineering skills are in great demand in the area, as seen by vigorous attempts of machine-learning on the protein folding and gene-finding problems. The great Donald Kunth, renowned Stanford computer science professor, is quoted often for pointing out that biology has 500 years of exciting problems to work on. He feels that biology is “so digital, and incredibly complicated, but incredibly useful”(Computer Literacy Interview with Donald Knuth by Dan Doernberg, December 1993). However, there are still some spokes in the wheel for the grand union between two great sciences and their offshoot technologies. Due to the estrangement which existed for many decades, professionals from both the fields have a lot to do in terms of fine tuning their communication. Skepticism from puritans in both fields towards the claim of Bioinformatics as an independent field also needs convincing answers.

Many universities world over have started teaching and research in the area. Journals are plenty and so are conferences and professional meetings. As the disciplines of bioinformatics and computational biology are gaining prominence day by day, an industry is also emerging fast on their shoulders, estimated at $1.82 billion in 2007. Bioinformatics has taken on a new glitter by entering the field of drug discovery in a big way. This is one area that seems to be becoming the single largest. bioinformatics application, from an Industry view point. In India, it has a special relevance in the context of the recent patent amendment that has brought in product patents.

There has been a green-shift in all prominent technology publications. IEEE has prominently adopted such a shift. I did a quick check. If you use the key word “biology” and search the IEEE Digital Library limiting the year of search, you get the following hits for the years indicated in brackets: 13 (1975), 40(1985), 3484 (1990), 9617 (1995), 16233 (2000) and 27526 (2006). I did this on 26 November 2006, among the 14,32,467 documents in the data base. About 2% documents have been greened! One of the latest additions to the prestigious IEEE Transactions series is IEEE & ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. It may be noted that biological motivation has a long history in the computer field, in the form of artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, to the recent ant-colony optimization techniques. Applications of computers in biology were mostly in the bio-medical field, in early days. One new facet that has emerged with Bioinformatics, is the focus on sub-cellular and molecular levels of Biology. Systems biology promises great growth in modeling cellular life, using conventional engineering approach, as already pointed to by projects such as e-Cell.

As far as job opportunities are concerned, at present in India, the opportunities are only evolving. Some major software giants and research and development laboratories of academic institutions as well as industries have opportunities for bioinformaticians. As the pharamceutical industry in India is starting to innovate in drug design, opportunities are expected to emerge in pharma sector also. Outside India, in pharma industries, research and development laboratories, software development industries already have good demand for bioinformaticians. As far as Centre for Bioinformatics is concerned, the centre houses an industry launched by its alumnus, SooryaKiran Bioinformatics Pvt Ltd and has offered placement and project positions to the students of the centre in the past.

Vide University order No. Ac.E1.A.2.29772/05 dated 13/01/2006, the Centre for Bioinformatics has been recognized as a centre of research of the University of Kerala. Candidates from Science, Applied Sciences and Engineering & Technology can apply for part-time or full-time research at the centre during December and June each year, according to the rules and regulations (Click Here for Regulations) of the University of Kerala in this regard. The doctoral committee for the centre is as follows, taking into consideration the inter-disciplinary nature of the subject:

1. Prof. & Head, Dept. of Zoology
     (Chairman)
2. Hon. Director
     Centre for Bioinformatics.
3. Prof. & Head, Dept of Botany
     (for candidates under Science Faculty)
4. Prof. & Head, Dept of Biochemistry
     (for candidates under Science Faculty)
5. Dr. K. P. P. Pillai, Former Principal, College of Engineering,Trivandrum
     (for candidates under Applied Science and Engineering & Technology Faculty)
7. Supervising Teacher.

Those seeking to do research are to identify a supervisor to begin with and application for registration should be made on the advice of the supervising teacher. The life science departments under the science faculty of the University has various research supervisors who work in applied bioinformatics or allied areas. The centre itself, however, currently focuses on the following computational themes (under Applied Sciences and Engineering & Technology faculties):
* Use of Digital Signal Processing in Genomic and Proteomic Sequence Analysis.
* Protein Structure Prediction.
* Sonification of Biological Sequence Data.
* Gene Finding Algorithms.
* Micro-array image processing.