Computational Biology and Bioinformatics in Nigeria

Abstract

Over the past few decades, major advances in the field of molecular biology, coupled with advances in genomic technologies, have led to an explosive growth in the biological data generated by the scientific community. The critical need to process and analyze such a deluge of data and turn it into useful knowledge has caused bioinformatics to gain prominence and importance. Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary research area that applies techniques, methodologies, and tools in computer and information science to solve biological problems. In Nigeria, bioinformatics has recently played a vital role in the advancement of biological sciences. As a developing country, the importance of bioinformatics is rapidly gaining acceptance, and bioinformatics groups comprised of biologists, computer scientists, and computer engineers are being constituted at Nigerian universities and research institutes. In this article, we present an overview of bioinformatics education and research in Nigeria. We also discuss professional societies and academic and research institutions that play central roles in advancing the discipline in Nigeria. Finally, we propose strategies that can bolster bioinformatics education and support from policy makers in Nigeria, with potential positive implications for other developing countries.

BIOS-ParallelBlast: Paralelización optimizada de alineamiento de secuencias sobre Xeon Phi

“…Gracias a los avances en las tecnologías genéticas como Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) y en el campo de la biología molecular, la comunidad científica ha generado grandes cantidades de información (Fatumo et al, 2014), por esta razón la bioinformática ha tomado mucha importancia en los últimos años, ya que gracias a ella, a los algoritmos y técnicas que aplica, se pueden analizar ágilmente los volúmenes de datos demasiado grandes y así obtener información relevante para las investigaciones.…”

Bioinformatics in Africa: The Rise of Ghana?

“…Researchers in Kenya and South Africa and their collaborators recently sequenced and assembled the genome of the tsetse fly—the vector of human African trypanosomiasis, a devastating NTD [ 41 ]. In Nigeria, bioinformatics research groups have been constituted, and bioinformatics techniques have been applied to address local research questions, mainly focusing on malaria [ 14 ]. During the recent outbreak of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa, Nigerian scientists, together with their international partners, provided a description of the disease epidemiology through whole-genome sequence analysis of affected patients and unaffected controls [ 42 ].…”

“…Developing collaborations between Ghanaian scientists could be a useful mechanism to build bioinformatics expertise [ 13 , 38 ]. This approach would present new opportunities, for instance, in collaborative research and student training [ 1 , 13 , 14 , 38 ]. Developing collaborative research efforts between scientists in Ghana and their colleagues elsewhere in Africa may also be a sustainable means to boost bioinformatics activities, by pooling together Africa-based resources and expertise to address research questions.…”

Developing expertise in bioinformatics for biomedical research in Africa

“…In addition, many leading scientific organisations also regularly organise bioinformatics training workshops for African peers ( Table 1 ). These organisations include the African Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (ASBCB, http://www.asbcb.org ), International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB, http://www.iscb.org ), the H3Africa nodes and Teaching and Research in Natural Sciences for Development in Africa (TReND in Africa, http://trendinafrica.org ) ( Bishop et al, 2015 , Fatumo et al, 2014 , Karikari, 2015a ).…”

“…Several African universities have come to accept the importance of bioinformatics and this has led to the establishment of many training programmes, including short courses, workshops, and degree programmes ( Bishop et al, 2015 , Fatumo et al, 2014 , Karikari, 2015a ). The short courses provide introductory knowledge to beginners and help to improve the number of scientists with knowledge of bioinformatics ( Karikari, 2015a ).…”