Introduction to Computational Tools in Biomedical Research

The digital revolution has significantly impacted worldwide technologies over the past few decades. Biomedical research is one of the most impacted fields with the advancement of computational power and data processing. The human genome sequencing project has generated an enormous amount of information, which is challenging to be stored and interpreted without the aid of computer programs. The development of computational algorithms has, therefore, greatly eased and reduced the time to study and analyze the human genome information. This has directly improved our understanding of the complex genome structure such as the presence of different regulatory regions and non-coding regions that code RNA like microRNA or long noncoding RNA (lncRNA). In addition, many computational tools have been developed to improve our understanding of the biomedical field. This covers the areas from the study of biomolecule structures and interactions, dynamicity of biomolecules, cellular activity, to system biology. This chapter thus provides a brief introduction to various computational tools in these areas and their importance.