Bioinformatics as a tool for studying the human genome

Dialectics between science and technology make the world (which is often a confusing place without any apparent direction) more predictable and controllable. We understand the world better thanks to scientific research. This knowledge, converted into technology, enables us to act on the world and to transform it in accordance with our wishes. Technology, meanwhile, provides us with tools that allow us to broaden our knowledge of the world, and which in turn gives rise to new technological developments. Life constitutes the most complex part of the world in which we live. Our knowledge about life and how it functions is still very limited. That is why the technology we have available to act on and transform the phenomena of life (for example, to fight illness and disease effectively) is very primitive. Even so, extraordinary technological developments that took place at the end of the 20th century (in which the use of computing was essential) have allowed us to observe, for the first time, life at its most elemental level: the DNA sequence of the genome. And also for the first time, we can glimpse the possibility of developing technology that can provide us with an effective control on life — a control we did not suspect even only a few decades ago. It is likely that this technology, constructed at the point where biology and computing meet, will radically change the world of the 21st century.