Mapping and Linkage Analysis

Bioinformatics is a discipline at the intersection of biology, computer science, information technology andmathematics. It aims at integrating and analysing awealth of biological data with the aim of identifying and assigning a function to each of the parts list of a living organism and understanding the incredibly complex processes that define life at a systems level. It is applied, for example, in the construction of genetic and physicalmaps of genomes, gene discovery, the inference of themolecular function and three-dimensional structure of their products, the interpretation of the effect of gene variations on the phenotype, the reconstruction of interaction and signal transduction pathways and the simulation of biological systems. Bioinformatics is an essential part of modern biology and a key player in the quest for a complete systems-level understanding of a living cell and of an organism.