Computational biology is a field of science that applies mathematical and computer-based methods to understand biological systems. It includes the development of algorithms, software tools, and databases for analyzing biological data. Computational biology has emerged as a new discipline at the interface of mathematics, computer science, and biology.
The goal of computational biology is to develop predictive models of complex biological phenomena. These models can be used to understand the mechanisms underlying these phenomena and to design experiments to test them. In addition, computational models can be used to generate hypotheses about the function of genes and proteins, and to predict the effect of mutations or other perturbations on cellular behavior.
A major challenge in computational biology is dealing with the large amount of data generated by modern experimental techniques such as DNA sequencing and microarray analysis. Another challenge is making sense of this data in order to extract biologically meaningful information. A third challenge is integrating information from different sources in order to obtain a comprehensive view of biological processes.
In recent years, there have been significant advances in computational methods for handling large amounts of data, for extracting biologically relevant information from it, and for integrating information from multiple sources. As a result, computational biology has become an essential tool in many areas of biomedical research including genomics, proteomics, drug discovery, systemsbiology ,and disease modeling .