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Bioinformatics
 You may have heard of megabytes and gigabytes in relation to computer storage. Drug discovery produces an amount of information that needs even larger measurement terms — terabytes (a thousand gigabytes) and beyond. It would be easy to get buried in all that data if it were not for key advancements in a field called bioinformatics.
Bioinformatics uses systems and mathematical models to advance the scientific understanding of living systems. At its simplest level, bioinformatics involves the creation and maintenance of biological databases, including DNA sequences. But bioinformatics also includes calculation tools. These tools can decipher the molecular pathways of disease, find patterns in the way genes respond to drugs, interpret the three-dimensional structure of important proteins, and enable the computer-aided design of new drugs.
By linking data between research laboratories and the clinic, bioinformatics has become a crucial tool in moving discoveries more rapidly to the patient.
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