Molecular biologists generate data at an unparalleled pace, and the demands and opportunities for interpreting such data are expanding more than ever. In this context, bioinformatics has emerged as a strategic frontier involving molecular biology, molecular evolution, information technology and statistics. Bioinformatics may be defined as the research, development or application of computational tools and approaches for expanding the use of biological data, including those to acquire, store, organize, archive, analyze or visualize such data. Its goal is to enable biological discovery based on existing data, or in other words to transform biological data into information, and eventually into knowledge.