Marine Bioinformatics: The Key to Unlock Resources of the Ocean

Abstract

Ocean contains the greatest biodiversity on Earth. The incredible variety of marine organisms are used for various applications in blue biotechnology without damaging the ecosystem. But despite its high biological and chemical diversity, the marine environment remains an underexploited resource for discovering novel products. The unique challenges presented by ocean like its vastness, inaccessibility, vagueness in biogeographical borders etc. limits research endeavors, especially identification and documentation of its biodiversity compared to terrestrial regions. Revolution in DNA sequencing technology and ‘omics’ approaches has immensely transformed marine species identification and contributed to flooding of biological data from oceans. This created demand for big data analysis and management leading to the birth of Marine Bioinformatics - the scientific discipline which uses informatics to gather, store, integrate, retrieve, analyze, interpret and disseminate marine biological data. Marine bioinformatics can uplift the knowledge intensive blue biotechnology sector but we need to ensure availability of well curated databases, technological awareness in marine biologists, global coordination and public support for research and education.