Big Data and its Future in Computational Biology: A Literature Review

Abstract

Big data technologies are used majorly for computational biology research nowadays due to the emerge of massive amounts of biological data that have been generated and collected at an unprecedented speed and scale and with different structures. As an example, the processing of billions of DNA sequence data per day represents the new generation of sequencing technologies. It is expected that the cost of acquiring and analyzing biomedical data will decrease with the assistance of technology upgrades in the computational biology field. The application of big data in health care is a fast-growing field, with many new discoveries and methodologies. In this study, an overview of recent developments and technologies in big data in the computational biology field. Moreover, in this study, we summarize and highlight the challenges, gaps and opportunities to improve and advance big data applications in computational biology. Also, this review presents a useful starting point for the application of Big Data in future Bioinformatics research. Finally, some of the Big Data sources in computational biology that help in applying these new emerging technologies are mentioned.