Sequence alignment is trying to match a DNA or amino acid sequence, even though the sequences might not be exactly the same, otherwise it would be a straight up string-search algorithm.
This is fundamental in bioinformatics for two reasons:
- when you sequence the DNA of a new species, you can guess what each protein does by comparing it with similar proteins in other species that you have already studied
- when doing DNA sequencing, and specially short-read DNA sequencing, you generally need to align the reads to reference genomes to know where you are inside the entire genome, and then be able to spot mutations, notably single-nucleotide polymorphisms
BLAST is a sequence alignment.
The NCBI free-to-use BLAST server: blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi. Having a centralized query server is fundamental, because the gain of sequence alignment really comes from having one huge database to link information together, which is best centralized.
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Computational organization and analysis of biological information. Comparing sequences, annotating genes and analyzing expression measurements requires both algorithms and biological assumptions; a numerical similarity score alone does not establish a shared function.
Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that combines biology, computer science, mathematics, and statistics to analyze and interpret biological data. It plays a crucial role in managing and understanding the vast amounts of information generated by modern biological research, particularly in areas such as genomics, proteomics, and molecular biology.