**10.3 Biological issues/ "quantum bio-informatics"and quantum information science**

Biological Information, **Bioinformatics,** involves the integration of computers, software tools, and databases in an effort to address biological questions and biological information. The wealth of genome sequencing information has required the design of software and the use of computers to process this information.

There are two important large-scale activities that use **bioinformatics**. They are genomics and proteomics. Genomics or genetics is concerned with the analysis of genomes. Scientists think about genome in terms of a complete set of DNA, RNA sequences. They code for the hereditary material that is passed on from generation to the next. The abundance of information about genome sequencing has required the design of software and the use of computers to process this information. Proteomics, on the other hand, refers to the analysis of the complete set of proteins or proteome, protein structures and various synthesis processes. Recent work in Proteomics include metabolomics, transcriptomics.

For the future of bioinformatics a key research question would be as to how to computationally compare complex biological observations, such as gene expression patterns and protein networks. Bioinformatics converts **biological observations to a model** that a computer will be able to process (or understand).

Of course Quantum Mechanics is the fundamental theory that describes the properties of subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, molecular assemblies. However, Quantum Mechanics operates on the nanometer and sub-nanometer scales. This forms the basis of fundamental life processes such as photosynthesis, respiration and vision. The fundamental claim by Quantum Mechanics is that all objects have wave-like properties and when they interact, quantum coherence describes the correlations between the physical quantities describing such objects that have a wave-like nature.
