Chemical Informatics?
This field, also known as one of the following terms; chemoinformatics, cheminformatics, or even chemiinformatics, is the application of computer technology to chemistry in all of its manifestations.
The field where the field of cheminformatics and its techniques are finding a lot of use currently is in the drug industry. That is why one definition of chemical informatics is “the mixing of information resources to transform data into information and information into knowledge, for the intended purpose of making decisions faster in the arena of drug lead identification and optimization.” The field is however now finding use in other fields to problems across the full range of chemistry.
The professionals who work in this field, Chemical informaticians, often work with massive amounts of data. Using this data, they construct information systems that help chemists make sense of the data, then attempt to a higher degree of accuracy, predict the properties of chemical substances from a sample of data. Thus, through the application of information technology, chemical informatics helps chemists organize and analyze known scientific data to assist in the development of novel compounds, materials, and processes.
There are field that People who work in chemical informatics may concentrate on. These include molecular modeling, chemical structure coding and searching, chemical data visualization, or a number of other areas of specialization.
Indeed, the various computer graphics codes for chemical structures that let us both view and search chemical structures via computer were developed by chemical informaticians.
Methods and tools used in cheminformatics include:
- Quantitative Structure/Activity or Quantitative Structure/Property Relationships (QSAR, QSPR)
- Genetic Algorithms
- Statistical Tools (e.g., recursive pairing)
- Data Analysis Tools
- Visualization Techniques