How the research question separates bioinformatics from computational biology (Video)
Written guide: Bioinformatics vs. Computational Biology
Full video: Bioinformatics versus Computational Biology
A bioinformatician mostly builds or runs tools that turn data into results, and a computational biologist mostly builds models of how a biological system behaves.
Chapters
- 0:00 How the research question separates bioinformatics from computational biology
Video transcript
0:00 How the research question separates bioinformatics from computational biology
The two roles differ in what the person builds. A bioinformatician mostly builds or runs tools that turn data into results. Aligning sequencing reads, calling variants, searching databases, and building pipelines are bioinformatics work. A computational biologist mostly builds models that explain or predict how a biological system behaves. Those models take the form of equations, simulations, or statistical models. The research question decides which label applies. Which genes differ between these samples is a bioinformatics task. Why does this population of cells oscillate is a computational biology question. The two fields overlap heavily and many researchers work in both fields. Job titles and degree names often use the two terms interchangeably.