Computational Biology - On the Verge of Widespread Impact
Dr. Dirk J. Evers
Director, Computational Biology
Illumina, Inc.
Computational Biology is defined as the science of understanding complex biological phenomena by the analysis of multi-sample and multi-variate quantitative data. With the advent of high-throughput measuring devices, particularly the new generation of DNA sequencers, the cost of generating data has dropped several orders of magnitude during the last 10 years. There is no sign of this trend slowing down. What will be the effect of cheap, fast, simple, robust, high-quality DNA sequencing? Computational Biology applications will become ubiquitous. It is well-known that Biotech and Pharma have been utilizing Computational Biology approaches successfully for some time, but now we see the technology and research spreading into industries such as Environment Management, Agrotech, Biofuels, Personalized Medicine and Consumer Genomics, to name just a few.