This is what Dr.. Vinicius Maracajá, Assistant Professor of the School of chemical sciences and pharmaceutical of the University of Chile and Researcher ACCDiS , who started his seminar based on the encyclopedic definition of a genome, which is a set made up of the genetic material of the DNA of chromosomes and mitochondria, which are studied by the interdisciplinary field of biology, called genomics.

These genomes are decoded by a machine called a sequencer, which translates or transforms information to be read by humans, obtaining the genetic material of an organism. Then he comes in to play the Bioinformatics, which is an integration between information technologies, mathematics, statistics and life sciences, it aims to interpret biological information.

Then, the expert explained how genomics and bioinformatics can be used valiantly to study the response to a pandemic, for example, "we can identify where the virus comes from, new ways of diagnosing, track epidemiology and know how the virus is being distributed, develop drugs and vaccines, performing epidemiological modeling and surveillance, among other applications," the academic noted.

To finish, Dr. Maracaja took the opportunity to mention its latest research conducted in collaboration between the University of Chile and Sao Paulo Brazil, "we developed a free platform called Outbreak, which allows for geographical surveillance of COVID-19 and other diseases, using various features or data to identify areas where there is the highest incidence. It is a website that can be used by any type of public, without the need for prior computational or system knowledge," explained Vinicius.

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