Bioinformatics is the field of science in which biology, computer science, and information technology merge into a single discipline. The ultimate goal of the field is to enable the discovery of new biological insights as well as to create a global perspective from which unifying principles in biology can be discerned. There are three important sub-disciplines within bioinformatics: 1) the development of new algorithms and statistics with which to assess relationships among members of the large data sets; 2) the analysis and interpretation of various types of data including nucleotide and amino acid sequences, protein domains, and protein structures; and 3) the development and implementation of tools that enable efficient access and management of different types of information.