Services
Biocuration
What is Biocuration?
The descrition of biocuration according to the International Society for Biocuration.
"Biocuration involves the translation and integration of information relevant to biology into a database or resource that enables integration of the scientific literature as well as large data sets. Accurate and comprehensive representation of biological knowledge, as well as easy access to this data for working scientists and a basis for computational analysis, are primary goals of biocuration.
The goals of biocuration are achieved thanks to the convergent endeavors of biocurators, software developers and researchers in bioinformatics. Biocurators provide essential resources to the biological community such that databases have become an integral part of the tools researchers use on a daily basis for their work."
Wikipedia describes a biocurator as, "a professional scientist who curates, collects, annotates, and validates information that is disseminated by biological and model Organism Databases. The role of a biocurator encompasses quality control of primary biological research data intended for publication, extracting and organizing data from original scientific literature, and describing the data with standard annotation protocols and vocabularies that enable powerful queries and biological database inter-operability. Biocurators communicate with researchers to ensure the accuracy of curated information and to foster data exchanges with research laboratories."
Bioinformatics
What is Bioinformatics?
Wikipedia describes bioinformatics as "an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combines biology, computer science, information engineering, mathematics and statistics to analyze and interpret the biological data. Bioinformatics has been used for in silico analyses of biological queries using mathematical and statistical techniques.
Bioinformatics includes biological studies that use computer programming as part of their methodology, as well as a specific analysis "pipelines" that are repeatedly used, particularly in the field of genomics. Common uses of bioinformatics include the identification of candidates genes and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Often, such identification is made with the aim of better understanding the genetic basis of disease, unique adaptations, desirable properties (esp. in agricultural species), or differences between populations. In a less formal way, bioinformatics also tries to understand the organisational principles within nucleic acid and protein sequences, called proteomics."
"A bioinformatician not only uses tools for understanding or solving biological problems, but also participates in developing tools for research. Bioinformaticians comprise of two types. The first category includes developers who implement algorithms and develop tools for bioinformatics. The second category includes curators who are responsible for all the work related to data resources and data integration." - from Bitesize Bio
Pharmacology
What is Pharmacology?
According to the British Pharmacological Society , "Pharmacology is the science of drugs and their effect on living systems. You can find pharmacology present everywhere. In medicine cabinets, when you visit the dentists and when you take any type of medication. Pharmacology is also responsible for painkillers, caffeine drinks and antibiotics. It is the science of what is happening to your body and to the drug itself. "