Innovations and Innovators

   Bioinformatics uses systems and mathematical models to teach the scientific understanding of living systems. Bioinformatics involves the creation and support of biological databases, which includes the DNA sequences. Bioinformatics also includes calculation tools that figure out the molecular pathways of disease, find patterns in the way genes respond to drugs, explain the three-dimensional structure of important proteins, and allow the computer-aided design of new drugs.

         During the 1970s, a Dutch theoretical biologist and complex system researcher Paulien Hogeweg along with Ben Hesper identified the study of informatic processes in biotic systems as an open and promising area. This was when Hogeweg and Hesper created the term Bioinformatics. According to Hogeweg, her goal was “to understand biotic systems as dynamic information processing systems at many interconnected levels.” Within this framework, her current research focuses on evolutionary dynamics and morphogenesis.

         Hogeweg’s and Hesper’s research on multilevel evolution aims to understanding different levels of selection, mixed genotype/phenotype mapping, and interactions over different timescales that provides the evolution of difficulty at the level of individuals and/or ecosystems. A central conjecture of Hogeweg’s and Hesper’s current research is a special pattern formation, and selection pressures at multiple timescales. They are now checking this conjecture by focusing on mutual interactions between

·         gene regulation and evolution in connecting the features of their abstract models of directing networks to analyze genomic data (and vice versa).

·         learning and evolution in complex environments, focusing on foraging 'cultures'

·         levels of selection in prebiotic evolution and the results for information gathering

         Their research on morphogenesis focuses on the relationship between and dynamic processes. They used a powerful method for multi-scale modeling (CPM). This allowed them to study morphogenesis opposed to many developmental models, which only allowed pattern formation. They studied morphogenetic mechanisms that resulted 'de-novo' in evolutionary models. By linking data between research laboratories and clinics, bioinformatics has become an important tool.