Review article
The Role of Bioinformatics in the Research and Development of Veterinary and Animal Sciences
Dr. Barkha Gupta
Assistant Professor
Department of Veterinary Physiology and Biochemistry
Post Graduate Institute of Veterinary Education and Research (PGIVER), Jaipur, Rajasthan (RAJUVAS, Bikaner)
The evolution of modern days scientific research in the disciplines of molecular biology and information science including high-throughput technologies like genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, transcriptomics, microarray etc. is generating enormous raw data. Such a huge amount of data has to be properly recorded, annotated, stored and retrieved to understand the biological processes and nature. This task is efficiently possible with the birth of a new full-fledged multidisciplinary integrated science called Bioinformatics which uses statistics, mathematics and engineering along with computer science for processing input biological information for meaningful interpretation and usage. The field of Bioinformatics has gained a tremendous growth over the past two decades. The term bioinformatics was introduced by Paulien Hogeweg and Ben Hesper in 1978 for the study of informatics processes in biotic systems. It entails the creation and advancement of databases, algorithms, computational and statistical techniques and theory to solve problems arising from the management and analysis of biological data.
Bioinformatics plays a key role in modern biology and is especially important in structural and functional genomics, systems biology, protein design and engineering, pharmaceutical development, medicine, ecology, population, genetics, etc. impacting tremendously on biomedical research. Major research efforts in this area include sequence alignment, gene finding, genome assembly, drug design, drug discovery, protein structure prediction and alignment, prediction of gene expression, protein–protein interactions, metabolic pathways, genome-wide association studies and the modeling of evolution. The main tools of a bioinformatician are computer software programs and the internet. Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST), developed by NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) is commonly used for doing sequence alignment to determine the similarity of arbitrary sequences against other sequences, possibly from structured databases of protein or DNA sequences.
Bioinformatics tools can be used to generate, mine, retrieve and analyze biological data for Veterinary research. Veterinary and Animal Sciences have an enormous contributory stake in public health and food safety, comparative medicine and pathology, animal health and welfare, wildlife and fisheries conservation, infectious disease epidemiology and surveillance, drug discovery and designing, vaccines development etc. Bioinformatics is useful in providing the platform for interdisciplinary collaborative veterinary research in order to harvest handsome returns in “One health approach” including animal, human and environmental health.
A wonderful example of use of bioinformatics in Veterinary and Animal Sciences is genome sequencing of livestock like Cattle, Buffalo, Pig, Sheep, Goat, Camel etc. and Poultry, helping in improving the health and production (milk and meat) of animals ultimately contributes to human nutrition. High-throughput gene expression is determined by measuring mRNA levels with multiple new techniques including microarrays, expressed cDNA sequence tag (EST) sequencing, serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) tag sequencing, massively parallel signature sequencing (MPSS), RNA-Seq (also known as “Whole Transcriptome Shotgun Sequencing” (WTSS)), or various applications of multiplexed in-situ hybridization. Ancestry prediction and conservation of extinct animal species are another area where bioinformatics finds applications. Bioinformatics can be the tool for sequencing microbial genome which can reduce levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, stabilizing the global climate change as livestock are major impetus of climate change through the emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, CH4, and nitrous oxide. Proteomics and Metabolomics of milk focusses on exploring genetic aspects, molecular pathways and cellular functions involved in the production of milk, its quality and safety which can further enhance the quality and quantity of milk.
In the longer term, integrative bioinformatic analysis of genomic, pathological, and clinical data in clinical trials may reveal potential adverse drug reactions in individual animal (personalised medicine) by use of simple genetic tests and targeting individualised therapy having no side effects. The field of Bioinformatics can also be the boon for students of Veterinary and Animal Sciences by getting the job opportunities in research and development (R&D) area.
Useful Bioinformatic websites are:
- National Center for Biotechnology Information (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) — maintains bioinformatic tools and databases i.e. BLAST.
- Genbank (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Genbank) — stores and archives DNA sequences from both large-scale genome projects and individual laboratories.
- Unigene (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/UniGene) — gene sequence collection containing data on map location of genes in chromosomes.
- National Center for Genome Resources (ncgr.org/) — offers a variety of bioinformatics services, including analysis, data visualization and on-site computing resources.
- European Bioinformatic Institute (ebi.ac.uk) — centre for research and services in bioinformatics; manages databases of biological data i.e. UniProt, Ensembl.
- Ensembl (ensembl.org) — automatic annotation database on genomes.
- SWISS-PROT (expasy.org/sprot/) — provides important protein database with sequence data from all organisms, which has a high level of annotation includes function, structure, and variations.
- International Society for Computational Biology (iscb.org/) — aims to advance scientific understanding of living systems through computation.
- BioInform (bioinform.com) — provides global bioinformatics services.
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272324245_Concepts_Of_Bioinformatics_And_Its_Application_In_Veterinary_Research_And_Vaccines_Development
- https://www.pashudhanpraharee.com/application-of-biosensors-technology-for-monitoring-of-animal-health-care-livestock-management-2/
