ABSTRACT
Bioinformatics methods allow you to compare and analyze sequences of proteins or nucleic acids to learn about their functions. Given an amino acid sequence, you often want to find a similar sequence in a database. These are called string searches. Sometimes, you want to align and compare two or more sequences, and measure the distance between them. By measuring distances between sequences, you can construct evolutionary trees, or infer biological functions or binding sites, or learn what drugs might bind to those proteins. By looking at sequence positions that are conserved through evolution, you can draw inferences about protein stability or function. And, if you are designing a drug to disable a pathogenic organism, you can compare the pathogen protein with human proteins, to avoid mistakenly drugging human proteins, causing side effects of drugs.
