10 November 2025

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Evolution of dental informatics as a major research tool in oral pathology

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Bioinformatics is a relatively new field of science that incorporates the principles of biology and computer science. It is mainly concerned with collecting, storing, and retrieving data from large databases.

Ever since the successful completion of the Human Genome Project, there has been an exponential growth in the volumes of biological data that is being generated worldwide. The evolution of bioinformatics has made it possible to access these databases and apply the information for better research. One discipline that has been benefitted from the advent of bioinformatics is oral pathology. Oral pathology is a branch of dentistry which deals with the diseases of the head and neck region. Remarkable progress has been made in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases with the aid of bioinformatics.

This article attempts to review the evolution and progress of dental informatics as a specialty and its applications in oral pathology.

Bioinformatics is a combination of biology and information technology. The discipline encompasses many computational tools and methods used to manage, analyze, and manipulate large sets of biological data.

According to Hwa A. Lim, bioinformatics is the new subject that is concerned with the collection and analysis of genetic data and its dissemination to the research community. The ultimate goal of this field is to facilitate new biological insights as well as to create a global perspective from which the unifying principles in biology can be discerned. Over the past few decades, huge volumes of information have been generated through advances in biomedical research. Bioinformatics is important because it enables us to manage these data more easily, to sift through the data for useful encoded gene segments, and to use this information for clinical decision making and developing new drugs and therapies. Biomedical informatics incorporates the knowledge of health sciences (medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing, and allied health sciences) with computer science, management and decision science, biostatistics, engineering, and information technologies. This involves the integrated use of several approaches and techniques from these sciences to solve problems relevant to healthcare delivery, health sciences, pharmaceutical research, education, and clinical/medical decision making.

The primary goal of bioinformatics is to increase the understanding of biological processes. What sets bioinformatics apart from other approaches, however, is its focus on developing and applying computationally intensive techniques (e.g., pattern recognition, data mining, machine learning algorithms, and visualization) to achieve this goal. Major research efforts in the field include sequence alignment, gene finding, genome assembly, drug design, drug discovery, protein structure alignment, protein structure prediction, prediction of gene expression and protein–protein interactions, genome-wide association studies, and the modeling of evolution.

Authors: Singaraju, Sasidhar; Prasad, H; Singaraju, Medhini

Source: https://journals.lww.com/