Dr. Philip J. ShawTitle: A molecular biologist's view of Bioinformatics: the tools we use and the tools we will need.
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Molecular biology is the "engine room" for bioinformatics, generating data from diverse experiments, such as expression microarrays, SNP microarrays, proteomics, flow cytometry, to name but a few. In addition to spending much of their time performing these experiments, molecular biologists need to analyse the data using bioinformatics. Data analysis is becoming more of a bottleneck for molecular biologists, who lack the computational and mathematical skills to perform this task effectively. Collaborative projects are now becoming fashionable, where molecular biologists turn over the analytical duties to full-time bioinformaticians. One downside of this specialization is that molecular biologists are not aware of the pitfalls of the algorithms used, and analytical flaws may be missed leading to erroneous conclusions of the data. The tutorial will highlight the speaker's experience as a molecular biologist who uses bioinformatic tools. From the material presented, it is hoped that bioinformaticians will appreciate the need for their specialization, but will also learn what tools need to be developed, who the target users are, and how to communicate with the molecular biologists to ensure that the tools are used correctly.