1 Software Tools and Resources for Bioinformatics Research Anil Rai, Jyotika Bhati and S.B.Lal Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute Library Avenue, New Delhi Biology is in the middle of a major paradigm shift driven by computing technology. Due to the impact of information technology, biological sciences have been rapidly becoming much more computational and analytical. Rapid progress in research in the field of genetics and related field combined with the tools provided by modern biotechnology has generated massive volumes of genetic and protein sequence data over last two decades. Compilation, storage, analysis for extraction of information and knowledge from this data becomes a challenging task as usual analytical procedures are not directly applicable to these data sets. Bioinformatics has been defined as a means for analysing, comparing, graphically displaying, modeling, storing, systemising, searching, and ultimately distributing biological information, which includes sequences, structures, function, and phylogeny. Thus, bioinformatics may be defined as a discipline that generates computational tools, databases, and methods to support genomic and post-genomic research. It comprises the study of DNA structure and function, gene and protein expression, protein production, structure and function, genetic regulatory systems, and clinical applications. Bioinformatics applications need knowledge from computer science, mathematics, statistics, medicine, chemistry and biology. Biology employs a digital language for representing its information using the four basic alphabets (A, C, G, T). All the chromosomes in an organism' cell have been represented and being identified using sequences of these alphabets. The demanding challenge here is to determine how this digital language of the chromosomes is being converted into the three- dimensional and sometimes four-dimensional languages of living and breathing organisms. It has been found that performing all these above-mentioned tasks manually is nearly impossible due to the massive volumes of biological data and the preciseness of task to be performed; it became mandatory to use computers for these purposes. Thus, the subject of bioinformatics deals with designing and deploying efficient software tools and computational algorithms for accomplishing the above quoted tasks in a fast and precise manner. Therefore, to bridge the gap between the real world of biology and precise logical nature of computers requires an interdisciplinary perspective. The tools of computer science, statistics, and mathematics are very critical for studying biology in the perspective of bioinformatics. Some of the recent advances in the field of biotechnology including improved DNA sequencing methods, new approaches to identify protein structure, and revolutionary methods to monitor the expression of many genes in parallel have posed number of challenges to computational scientists. The designing tools and techniques to deal with different sources of incomplete and noisy data have become another crucial goal for the bioinformatics community. In addition, there is the need to implement computational solutions based on theoretical frameworks to allow scientists to perform complex inferences about the phenomena under study.