Editing Computational biology (section)

==Related fields==

Computational biology, [[bioinformatics]] and [[mathematical and theoretical biology|mathematical biology]] are all interdisciplinary approaches to the [[List of life sciences|life sciences]] that draw from quantitative disciplines such as mathematics and [[information science]]. The [[National Institutes of Health|NIH]] describes computational/mathematical biology as the use of computational/mathematical approaches to address theoretical and experimental questions in biology and, by contrast, bioinformatics as the application of information science to understand complex life-sciences data.<ref name="nih"/>

Specifically, the NIH defines

{{blockquote|Computational biology: The development and application of data-analytical and theoretical methods, mathematical modeling and computational simulation techniques to the study of biological, behavioral, and social systems.<ref name="nih"/>}}

{{blockquote|Bioinformatics: Research, development, or application of computational tools and approaches for expanding the use of biological, medical, behavioral or health data, including those to acquire, store, organize, archive, analyze, or visualize such data.<ref name="nih"/>}}

While each field is distinct, there may be significant overlap at their interface,<ref name="nih"/> so much so that to many, bioinformatics and computational biology are terms that are used interchangeably.

The terms computational biology and [[evolutionary computation]] have a similar name, but are not to be confused. Unlike computational biology, evolutionary computation is not concerned with modeling and analyzing biological data. It instead creates algorithms based on the ideas of evolution across species. Sometimes referred to as [[genetic algorithm]]s, the research of this field can be applied to computational biology. While evolutionary computation is not inherently a part of computational biology, computational evolutionary biology is a subfield of it.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Foster |first=James |date=June 2001 |title=Evolutionary Computation |journal=Nature Reviews Genetics |volume=2 |issue=6 |pages=428–436 |doi=10.1038/35076523 |pmid=11389459 |s2cid=205017006}}</ref>