Binformatics: not just for sequences anymore

The expansion of genomic information has made data integration as important to bioinformatics as computational analyses. A ‘systems biology’ approach to understanding drug targets requires integrating diverse types of data, including nucleotide and protein sequences, mRNA and protein expression measurements, model organism data, alternative splicing, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and more. This review describes how publicly available databases and data formats facilitate such integration. However, this discussion is by no means comprehensive. It represents the tools and approaches that Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) Bioinformatics has chosen to pursue. At BMS, two tools provide access to this information. Genome browsers provide graphic overviews of sequence-based information, whereas a curated database of drug target information provides annotation and analyses. The integration of all these functions results in a flexible bioinformatics infrastructure for drug discovery.