Growth of biotechnology has accelerated particularly during the last decade due to path breaking advancements in biology and new technologies that produce large high quality data. One such advancement is the high throughput full genome sequencing projects, including human genome, have produced very large data. The analysis of such large data and extraction of knowledge from this data is possible only with the help of new algorithms and compute intensive techniques. Thus, biologists need to use almost every new technical development in information technology, computer science, and intelligent application to solve complex biological problems leading the development of multi-disciplinary area called bioinformatics.
Bioinformatics has become a frontline applied science and is of vital importance to study new biology, which is widely recognized as the new scientific endeavor of the twenty-first century. The growth in full genomic sequencing, structural genomics, proteomics, micro-array, etc. will be very slow without application of bioinformatics. In fact, usefulness of these areas to solve complex biological problems will be limited without bioinformatics and thus it gives a high importance very high importance to Bioinformatics.
India was the first country in the world to establish in 1987 a Biotechnology Information System (BTIS) network to create an infrastructure that enables it to harness, biotechnology through the application of Bioinformatics. The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) has taken up this infrastructure development project and created a distributed network at a very low cost. BTIS is today recognized as one of the major scientific network in the world dedicated to provide the-state-of-the-art infrastructure, education, manpower and tools in bioinformatics.