Bioinformatics has three related facets: proteomics, genomics and transcriptomics. Their development has been driven by the desire of physical scientists and biologists to understand how living cells work. The cell is a system with cellular components interacting with each other, and these components, as well as their interactions, determine the state of the cell, i.e., whether it will differentiate into a kidney cell, a liver cell or a cancer cell. To understand how living cells work, these components and their interactions need to be identified and characterized. Proteomics represents the earliest attempt to identify a major subclass of cellular components, the proteins. Genomics, especially its gene-finding component, represents an alternative way of finding cellular components because many of the cellular components are coded in the genome. Transcriptomics, with data mainly from microarray chips, represents still another approach to identify cellular components. Time-specific information on gene expression during cell differentiation and comparative data on gene expression allow biologists to construct networks on gene interaction. I will provide an overview of these three facets of bioinformatics and highlight problems that need to be solved.

The talk is multimedia with my voice, my writing on the blackboard and my movement, but with NO presentation on the computer screen.