Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Biology
Bioinformatics and the related field of computational biology is the appliance of mathematical and information-science techniques to biology. This undertaking is inherently tricky because a living organism rep¬resents such a complex interaction of chemical processes. Understanding any one process in isolation does not give a precise understanding of the role it plays in physiology. Similarly, as more has been learned about the genome of humans and other organisms, it has become increasingly clear that the programs represented by gene sequences are interpreted through compound interactions of genes and the environment. Given this complexity, the great strides that have been made in genetics and the detailed research of metabolic and other biological processes would have been impossible without advances in computing and computer science. The ability to compare genes and to account for the effects of mutation has also established evolutionary biology on a solid foundation. Given a good estimate of the mutation rate in mitochondrial DNA, the chronology of species and common ancestors can be determined with significant precision using statistical methods and suitable data structures. The results of such research have cast intriguing if sometimes controversial light on such issues in paleontology as the relationship between early modern humans and Neanderthals. Computational genetics can also measure the biodiversity of a present-day ecosystem and forecast the likely future of particular species in it.