Those of us with even a passing interest in science are used to
the idea that computers play a central role in understanding
physics and chemistry, especially high-powered computation used
in areas such as weather prediction and molecular visualization.
However, over the past few years, a new target for that
computation has emerged and begun to attract media attention.
It's called computational biology (or more catchy,
bioinformatics) and it refers to the digital storage,
categorization, and analysis of biological data. If your most
recent encounter with biology took place in high school, you may
be surprised by any such crossover with computing. Although I
always found it fascinating, I remember biology never quite
having the rigor of its counterparts in the science curriculum.
Some cells did this, other cells had that, and different
organisms did all sorts of strange things, especially when
dissected by over-enthusiastic schoolchildren. But there seemed
to be few universal principles equivalent in scope to