The biotechnological revolution, along with the growth in Information. Technology has culminated in a stream of its own - Bioinformatics - the recording, updating, storage, analysis and searching/ retrieving of nucleic acid sequences, protein, sequences and structural information. Sequences are analysed and used by geneticists, cell biologists, molecular biologists and the like. The structural information of molecules leads to molecular modeling.

The various technologies of bioinformatics have been developed over the past three decades. To trace the history, in the early 1960s Margaret Dayhoff and her colleagues collected all the known amino acid sequences which led to the ''Atlas of Protein sequences and structures''.

Herein, lay the basics on which the entire bioinformatics community now depends, for day-to-day work on computational biology. Today, a floppy disc filled with a data set, would have meant, back in the 1960s, years of work from a small group of researchers; come forward in time to 2002 - the same amount of data can be generated in a fraction of a day in one of the protein or DNA sequence databases.

The Internet has completely changed the way scientists search for exchange of information. Data that, once, had to be communicated on paper is now digitalized and distributed from centralized databases. The next phase then was the advent of the DNA sequence databases in 1982 at the initiation of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). Thereafter GebBank (of the NIH, USA) joined hands to be followed a couple of years later by the DNA Database of Japan (DDBJ).

This collaboration of three groups is involved in transcribing what has been published in the printed journals to an electronic format, more appropriate for use with computers. All these sequence databases have professional biologists for proofreading; at the same time tools are developed for harnessing the information. The types of data available can arrange from the protocol of an experiment to the sequence of an entire chromosome.

There are resources, which provide connections among biological sequences and molecular structures as well as with abstracts. What is needed is the ability to examine data at varying levels of detail.

Armed with the sequence of a gene, the 3D structure of its protein can be predicted. With the completion of the Human Genome Project, this is possible for every human gene. Hence, the protein or nucleic acid receptor of any disease can be obtained, thus making it easy to synthesise a ligand - the drug for the disease. This, then is the one important application of Bioinformatics to the pharmacy field - molecular modelling of the drug. Each genetic disorder can be visualized and treated!

This currently is the ''hot news'', which is being fed to the ''fad hungry'' consumer under the area of Pharmacogenomics. It holds the promise that drugs can be ''tailor made'' for individuals and adapted to each person'' genetic make up. Knowledge of single nucleotide polymorphisms can be applied to synthesise a specific shaped drug molecule. Hence the drug can be targeted at a specific receptor - be it a protein or a nucleic acid. This will not only minimize costs, but will produce a safer drug - one that will not destroy other healthy cells. The ''hit and trial'' method which takes up so much time and money will give way to an accurate, targeted drug, based on a person''s genetics and hence metabolic processes.

Gene therapy which is chiefly in the experimental stages, will also fast move up the lane of implementation. Genetic screening for diseases will be sped up. In the long run, a combination of drug designing techniques will lead to a decrease in the overall cost of health care.

- The author is lecturer, S.G.R.S. College of Pharmacy, Saswad, Pune