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Bioinformatics of Brain Diseases

Tuba Sevimoglu

University of Health Sciences, İstanbul, Türkiye

As the renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku says “Sitting on your

shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe”. The com-

plexity of the tasks the brain carries also makes it difficult for researchers

to comprehend its mechanism in disease and health. For a thorough compre-

hension of how the brain functions, understanding the molecular basis of the

brain’s general activity is crucial. The study of how DNA is expressed as pro-

teins and other molecules is known as transcriptomics. Brain transcriptomics

technologies help us gather information regarding gene expression. Microar-

ray and RNA-seq technologies have been used in this regard for quite a while.

Understanding brain diseases and disorders require the use of bioinformat-

ics which is the acquisition and interpretation of big biological data gathered

through the use of these technologies and more.

8.1

Introduction

Researchers had hoped that the majority of human diseases will be fully

comprehended and cured after the Human Genome Project was completed.

However, they were left with a massive amount of data to be analyzed and in-

terpreted and many more questions to be answered. Bioinformatics, a multidis-

ciplinary field that uses computer approaches to make sense of large amounts

of biological data, comes in help here. This field makes use of biology, genetics,

medicine, computer science, and engineering [1].

Dayhoff was the first to use computer techniques in biology to analyze

protein sequence similarities [2]. She is regarded as a bioinformatics pioneer.

In the present day, bioinformatics is concerned with not just sequence simi-

larities but the sequencing of DNA, RNA, and proteins as well as the storing

and comparison of data, the analysis of protein interactions, the knowledge

DOI: 10.1201/9781003461906-8

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