Video Transcript
Fill in the blank. Bioinformatics is a field of study
that combines biology and blank to facilitate the analysis of large and complex sets
of biological data, such as genomes. (A) Medicine, (B)
telecommunications, (C) media science, (D) computer science, or (E)
electrophysiology.
This question asks us about
bioinformatics. We are told that it combines the
study of biology and another topic, which we need to identify.
You may have heard of
bioinformatics in relation to processes such as DNA sequencing. The smallest known genome, found in
a symbiotic bacteria, contains around 160,000 base pairs. Sequencing even this small of a
genome requires a lot of time and power. But the data sets become
exponentially larger for more advanced organisms. For example, the human genome has
more than three billion base pairs.
The only possible way to produce,
store, and analyze all of these data is with the aid of powerful computers, and that
is exactly what bioinformatics does. For example, computers allow
scientists to compare the DNA of individuals belonging to the same species. This allows them to detect minor
differences in the base pair sequences that may contribute to genetic disorders. Computers can also compare DNA
sequences of different species to figure out the evolutionary relationships between
them.
Imagine if you wanted to sequence
the genomes of a human, a gorilla, and a chimpanzee. All of these are primates, but how
closely related are they? Only with an understanding of
biology and the help of a computer could you accurately analyze and compare the DNA
sequences of the primates. This would allow you to conclude
that humans and chimpanzees have more genetic similarity than humans and
gorillas. This is because humans and
chimpanzees have a more recent common ancestor than do humans and gorillas.
Now that we’ve discussed
bioinformatics and a couple of its many applications, let’s take a look at our
answer choices. We’ve seen that bioinformatics uses
computers to aid in the production, organization, and analysis of genetic-based data
sets. So the correct term to fill in the
blank is found in option (D). And the completed sentence is
“Bioinformatics is a field of study that combines biology and computer science to
facilitate the analysis of large and complex sets of biological data, such as
genomes.”
