This glossary presents 15 terms commonly used in the field of bioinformatics, which combines biology, computer science, statistics, and more recently, AI tools. It can therefore help to understand articles on the new developments in bioinformatics that are being made with new AI tools. The majority of the definitions for these terms were found on Google with Oxford Languages. For the AI terminologies, I used IBM's site, which specializes in AI models and productivity, among other things. Then for the genetical and biological processes, I used dictionary.com.
biomarkers
noun
A measurable substance in an organism whose presence is indicative of some phenomenon such as disease, infection, or environmental exposure.
Example: A biomarker that may predict aggressive disease recurrence in liver transplant recipients.
fr: Biomarqueurs
cross-validation
noun
A process by which a method that works for one sample of a population is checked for validity by applying the method to another sample from the same population.
Example: Five repeats of tenfold cross-validation were used to evaluate the classification accuracy.
fr: Validation croisée
data set
noun
A collection of related sets of information that is composed of separate elements but can be manipulated as a unit by a computer.
Example: Google said its accompanying flash flood prediction tool, trained on the flood data set, is able to anticipate the weather events in a way that wasn’t possible before.
fr: Ensembles de données
deep learning
noun
A subset of machine learning driven by multilayered neural networks whose design is inspired by the structure of the human brain.
Example: Deep learning models are most commonly trained through supervised learning on labeled data to perform regression and classification tasks.
fr: l'apprentissage profond
diagnosis
noun
The identification of the nature of an illness or other problem by examination of the symptoms.
Example: "Early diagnosis and treatment are essential."
fr: Diagnostic
genome
noun
The complete set of genes or genetic material present in a cell or organism.
Example: This microorganism is frequently used in laboratory studies because it possesses an extremely small genome.
fr: Génome
genome sequencing
noun
The science or process of determining the DNA sequence of the genome of an organism.
Example: However, creating antigens for each cancer type can require extensive genome sequencing or bioinformatics analysis.
fr: Séquençage du génome
genomics
noun
The branch of molecular biology concerned with the structure, function, evolution, and mapping of genomes.
Example: "The last ten years of personalized medicine has been taken over by genomics".
fr: Génomique
modeling
noun
The devising or use of abstract or mathematical models to assist calculations and predictions.
Example: Fueling bioinformatics discoveries, calling for the use of hybrid AI-biological modeling to achieve generalization and interpretability.
fr: modélisation
mutation
noun
The changing of the structure of a gene, which may result in a variant form able to be transmitted to subsequent generations, caused by the alteration of single base units in DNA, or the deletion, insertion, or rearrangement of larger sections of genes or chromosomes.
Example: "We update our flu vaccine to keep up with the continual mutation of the flu virus".
fr: Mutation
overfitting
noun
When a model fits too closely or even exactly to its training data, such that it can’t make accurate predictions or conclusions from any data other than the training data set.
Example: "To prevent overfitting, the data scientist used regularization techniques to simplify the neural network".
fr: Surapprentissage
prognosis
noun
A forecast of the likely course of a disease or ailment.
Example: "It is very difficult to make an accurate prognosis."
fr: Pronostic
protein
noun
Any of a class of nitrogenous organic compounds that have large molecules composed of one or more long chains of amino acids and are an essential part of all living organisms, especially as structural components of body tissues such as muscle, hair, etc., and as enzymes and antibodies.
Example: "A protein found in wheat"
fr: protéine
proteome
noun
The entire complement of proteins that is or can be expressed by a cell, tissue, or organism.
Example: "the analysis of the human proteome"
fr: protéome
proteomics
noun
The study of proteomes and their functions.
Example: "Researchers are using proteomics to identify new biomarkers for early cancer detection".