Early bioinformatics: the birth of a discipline—a personal view

2003/11/20 by Christos Ouzounis, Alfonso Valencia · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Biomedical Research #Biomedical Text Mining and Ontologies #Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies

paper · doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btg309

openalex publication_date 2003/11/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

MOTIVATION: The field of bioinformatics has experienced an explosive growth in the last decade, yet this 'new' field has a long history. Some historical perspectives have been previously provided by the founders of this field. Here, we take the opportunity to review the early stages and follow developments of this discipline from a personal perspective. RESULTS: We review the early days of algorithmic questions and answers in biology, the theoretical foundations of bioinformatics, the development of algorithms and database resources and finally provide a realistic picture of what the field looked like from a resources and finally provide a realistic picture of what the field looked like from a practitioner's viewpoint 10 years ago, with a perspective for future developments.

Citations

• Evolutionary Divergence and Convergence in Proteins
• Tertiary templates for proteins
• The protein data bank: A computer-based archival file for macromolecular structures
• The Multiple Sequence Alignment Problem in Biology
• A simple method for displaying the hydropathic character of a protein
• The chemical basis of morphogenesis
• Evolutionary Rate at the Molecular Level
• The Leucine Zipper: A Hypothetical Structure Common to a New Class of DNA Binding Proteins
• Use of Helical Wheels to Represent the Structures of Proteins and to Identify Segments with Helical Potential
• Structure of proteins: packing of alpha-helices and pleated sheets.
• CONFIDENCE LIMITS ON PHYLOGENIES: AN APPROACH USING THE BOOTSTRAP
• The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution
• Basic local alignment search tool
• Central Dogma of Molecular Biology
• The Use of Helical Net-Diagrams to Represent Protein Structures
• Origins and Evolutionary Relationships of Retroviruses
• The definition of random sequences
• Evolution of Proteolytic Enzymes
• Helix to helix packing in proteins
• Identification of common molecular subsequences
• Evolutionary trees from DNA sequences: A maximum likelihood approach
• Comparison of the predicted and observed secondary structure of T4 phage lysozyme
• The Anatomy and Taxonomy of Protein Structure
• The structure of proteins: Two hydrogen-bonded helical configurations of the polypeptide chain

Cited by

• Bioinformatics [wikipedia]