Monday, October 18, 2010

bioinformatics in China

Bioinformatics in China: A Personal Perspective
Liping Wei and Jun Yu

In this personal perspective, we recall the history of bioinformatics and computational biology in China, review current research and education, and discuss future prospects and challenges. The field of bioinformatics in China has grown significantly in the past decade despite a delayed and patchy start at the end of the 1980s by a few scientists from other disciplines, most noticeably physics and mathematics, where China's traditional strength has been. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, rapid expansion of the field was fueled by the Internet boom and genomics boom worldwide and in China. Today bioinformatics research in China is characterized by a great variety of biological questions addressed and the close collaborative efforts between computational scientists and biologists, with a full spectrum of focuses ranging from database building and algorithm development to hypothesis generation and biological discoveries. Although challenges remain, the future of bioinformatics in China is promising thanks to advances in both computing infrastructure and experimental biology research, a steady increase of governmental funding, and most importantly a critical mass of bioinformatics scientists consisting of not only converts from other disciplines but also formally trained overseas returnees and a new generation of domestically trained bioinformatics Ph.D.s.

No comments:

Post a Comment