Bioinformatics as mashup

bioinformatics: acquiring, collating and rearranging information already available elsewhere?

That is from a Tweet by Neil. My reaction was somthing along the lines of “boy that sounds like the definition of a mashup”.

Bioinformatics is a broad field, but part of it, a good part of what a bioinformatician does is exactly what Neil describes. The work of a bioinformatician is built on data collected by many people around the world and deposited in a variety of data bases. A lot of what we do is take information from one and try and match it up to information from a second source, presumably with the goal of getting additional insights. It might sound crude to call it that, but I think if we start thinking of bioinformatics as a mashup, we could start thinking about making those mashups available to others, and perhaps even new ways to present the information.

Disclaimer: This post was written early in the morning before any intake of caffeine

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