Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Dr. Steve Strauss distinguished professor of forest biotechnology in the College of Forestry at Oregon State explains to me the importance of a gene sequencing science called bioinformatics. "It is fundamental and it took a lot of people to do all of the work. The biggest part of it is analyzing the data. This project is called bioinformatics and it is the biggest effort. Putting a sequence together to make a genome, assembling is what they call it, is actually very hard to do because of the complexity of the DNA. And then interpreting it, what does it mean? You put it together to learn what genes are new compared to other species that we have done this with, what changes look like they are important, density of wood, or flowering, whatever trait you are interested in, there is a whole interpretive part. It is a huge bio informatics effort. Trying to compare your DNA to everything else and make sense of it. So with this bio informatics information, you could breed a bigger eucalyptus tree, you could breed a eucalyptus tree with harder wood that would make it better for fuel, is that where you are going with all of this? Yes exactly, all of the above. Depending on what your goals are and what the world needs, what particular market and industry is selling into, they might want harder wood, they may want softer wood, they might want longer fibers, they might want would that pulps easily so you use less chemical energy." What about pine trees that are more resistant to bark beetles?
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