Bioinformatics and Computational Biology in Toxicology: Gateways for Precision Medicine

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) defines bioinformatics as “… the field of science in which biology, computer science, and information technology merge to form a single discipline”. As such, the field of bioinformatics includes computer scientists who develop algorithms for sequence analysis, biostatisticians who develop and implement methods of analyses for large clinical datasets, mathematicians or physical scientists who develop models to describe the interactions of genes, proteins, and small molecules within cells, and all those engaged in the development of software and databases for manipulation, storage, and retrieval of information in support of their research. This chapter focuses on how computational biology has been enabled by molecular informatics to provide the basis for in silico studies that facilitate the collection, organization, and analysis of datasets that explain biological phenomena and that help to drive biological discovery with applications in precision medicine.