2 research outputs found
Establishment of computational biology in Greece and Cyprus: Past, present, and future.
We review the establishment of computational biology in Greece and Cyprus from its inception to date and issue recommendations for future development. We compare output to other countries of similar geography, economy, and size—based on publication counts recorded in the literature—and predict future growth based on those counts as well as national priority areas. Our analysis may be pertinent to wider national or regional communities with challenges and opportunities emerging from the rapid expansion of the field and related industries. Our recommendations suggest a 2-fold growth margin for the 2 countries, as a realistic expectation for further expansion of the field and the development of a credible roadmap of national priorities, both in terms of research and infrastructure funding
Strategies and opportunities for promoting bioinformatics in Zimbabwe.
CITATION: Shoko, R., et al. 2018. Strategies and opportunities for promoting bioinformatics in Zimbabwe. PLoS Computational Biology, 14(11):e1006480, doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006480.The original publication is available at https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiolIntroduction: The increasing applications of advanced technologies in life sciences are fueling the growth of
data from genome sequencing, functional genomics experiments, and macromolecular structure
determination. Bioinformatics (sometimes interchangeably used with the term “computational
biology”) permits researchers to collect, manage, and sift through these massive data sets
and derive scientific insight from them [1,2]. Bioinformatics holds a big promise in addressing
many of the problems that are facing humanity today, including human health, agriculture,
and the environment [3–8]. Consequently, the demand for skilled scientists with the ability to
use information technology to solve life science problems has been rising steadily globally.
Similar to other developing countries in Africa, bioinformatics is slowly gaining popularity
among Zimbabwean scientists. In this paper, we review the progress made by Zimbabwean scientists
in bioinformatics and propose strategies for boosting bioinformatics capacity in the
country. To our knowledge, this work is the first attempt to give a comprehensive report of
bioinformatics activities in the country. As such, it is inevitable that our review may not be
exhaustive and may fall short of mentioning or acknowledging groups or scientists who have
contributed or presented their work on other platforms.https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006480Publisher's versio