Special section: Biomedical and bioinformatics challenges to computer science

摘要

Although bioinformatics was born as an interdisciplinary science bridging basic biology with computer science [1], in these last years it is more and more used in conjunction with medical informatics and translational medicine and involves the comparative analysis of genomics, proteomics and clinical data [2], often using the Grid as an infrastructure [3].rnIn addition, bioinformatics tools are more and more integrated with other disciplines, such as mathematics and systems theory, for building mathematical models aiming to describe the dynamics and behavior of biological systems such as cells, tissues, organs, and populations, a field often referred to as systems biology or in-tegrative biology. Thus, modern bioinformatics deals with methods for acquiring, storing, retrieving, and analyzing biological and medical data [4] and includes computational platforms and sophisticated data models to simulate and foresee the behavior of living systems.