Bioinformatics Glossary

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Bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC): Cloning vector that can incorporate large fragments of DNA. (see YACS) 

Bacteriophage: A virus that infects bacteria. The bacteriophage DNA has served as a basis for cloning vectors, and is also utilized to create phage libraries containing human or other genes. 

Baculovirus: An insect virus which forms the basis of a protein expression system 

Base pair: A pair of nitrogenous bases (a purine and a pyrimidine), held together by hydrogen bonds, that form the core of DNA and RNA i.e the A:T, G:C and A:U interactions. 

Beta sheet: A three dimensional arrangement taken up by polypeptide chains that consists of alternating strands linked by hydrogen bonds. The alternating strands together form a sheet that is frequently twisted. One of the secondary structural elements characteristic of proteins. 

Bioinformatics: 
1.The field of endeavor that relates to the collection, organization and analysis of large amounts of biological data using networks of computers and databases (usually with reference to the genome project and DNA sequence information). 
2. Bioinformatics, sometimes, is used interchangeably with the term Computational Biology. Precisely, Computational Biology is defined as the systematic development and application of computing systems and computational solution techniques to models of biological phenomena; Bioinformatics is defined as the systematic development and application of computing systems and
computational solution techniques analyzing data obtained by experiments, modeling, database search, and instrumentation regarding biological aspect. 

Bivalent: Having two binding sites; having 2 free electrons available for binding. 

Blunt-end (ligation): The joining of DNA fragments that contain no overhang at either end and consequently no DNA bases available for hybridization (cf. sticky-end ligation).

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