An information explosion!
                           Bioinformatics
                           Computational tools are 
                           developed to collect, organize 
                           and analyze a wide variety of 
                           biological data
    Advances in DNA sequencing technologies have accelerated 
    the pace of discovery. Much of the process is now automated. 
     What is a database?
     Which databases are important for molecular cell biology research?
     How is information processed in databases?
          Literature
                         Nucleotide
  Protein
                              Organism
                       Function
       Structure
          Biological databases use different organizing principles
           Hyperlinks connect records in different databases
                        Databases are organized collections of information
                                          Information is stored in records
      Databases assign each record a unique accession 
      number using their own numbering system                  Accession #
      Fields are used to cross-reference the data.             Field 1 ........................
      Records can be searched by fields.                       Field 2 .......................
                                                               Data
      Data is entered in the record using a defined            ............................................
      format                                                   ............................................
              Bioinformaticians work with computer scientists to set up the database structure
                       Curators review and link records within and between databases 
                   The information in databases ultimately derives from experimental data
                                                                                                                 to 
                                                                                                             PubMed
     Researchers do experiments        Researchers analyze data and                Data is published in 
                                     e          write papers                             journals
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                     Curators will process the submissions and link entries in different databases