During my internship, I will share with two researchers about both aspects of bioinformatics.
The one made mathematics studies, and since he started to use a computer in its works, he inherited of all what his teammates, purists mathematicians, had rejected : statistics and mathematics using a computer; till he become a real IT researcher. But his discovery for new domains didn't stopped there: he also handled projects tightly related with biology for which strong mathematical skills was needed, using computer to make the bridge. Someday, a biologist teammate asked him to ensure the IT part of his project, a real effort to acquire the needed biology acknowledgements, made of him a part time bioinformatician.
The other one is a pure biologist, more precisely a structural enzymologist. Enzymes are proteins that modify other chemical compounds, thank to their very specific shape. He studies the link between the basis of enzymes, the amino acids sequences, and the function of those enzymes: very specific work! But too much redondant to him. A few years after the rise of network technology (internet isn't so old!), he reconsidered his profession, looking for liberation from the heavy constraints that biological laboratory represented, and took the decision to switch to bioinformatics, renouncing laboratory works, benefiting from the growth of these new fields.
Thanks to their open mindness, those two teammates currently form a pair of bioinformaticians, much symbolising the union of both science domains to form bioinformatics.
