[What is bioinformatics?].

Yet bioinformatics has neither clear definition nor proper Japanese equivalent for this word. Bioinformatics is mainly composed of two fields or disciplines; one is computer and information technology as a tool for analyzing massive data such as genome and proteome, and the other one is research for the integrated biology based on the knowledge of genome. Classical and narrow-sense bioinformatics corresponds to the former. The latter called new bioinformatics aims to understand living thing as a whole, where both genome information and mathematical model play complimentary roles. From now the postgenome area on, this new bioinformatics may give novel perspective about living thing, biology and human.