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MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online)   A major bio­

informatics database operated by the National Center for Biotechnology Information

(NCBI) that collects and provides medical information and literature. 

Metabolomics  Analysis of the metabolome, the totality of all metabolic products

(metabolite). 

Modelling  Field of application of bioinformatics that deals with the computer-aided

mathematical description of experimental data and system properties/effects. 

Modular  Recurring elements (units) in biological systems, e.g. amino acids for proteins.

These are parts of molecular networks and form filaments that always form new patterns

and properties (combinatorics).

Nanocellulose Chip  New technology that replaces silicon computer chips with nanocel­

lulose chips. By using light-controlled proteins, transistors are replaced. They have the

potential to function much better, in particular to be more environmentally friendly, more

durable (thousands of years), faster (petahertz frequency) and to have better storage prop­

erties (exabyte memory). DNA serves as the storage medium, polymerases to synthesize

and read in sequences and exonucleases to degrade and read out, the nanocellulose is the

matrix for the enzymes and the DNA. Polymerases, exonucleases and other molecules are

controlled by light-controlled protein domains.

Natural Computing (also called “Analog Computing”)  Branch of synthetic biology that

describes computing with molecules or even with entire living organisms.

Neighbor Joining  Phylogenetic procedure in which the family tree is based on neighbor

similarity and the respective ancestors are calculated for direct neighbors. 

NetworkAnalyzer  Cytoscape plugin, which allows an analysis of the network topology,

e.g. with respect to network interconnection (average number of interaction neighbors) or

robustness (network centrality).

Neural Networks  see neural computing.

Neuronal Computing  Field of application/software in bioinformatics in which a pro­

gram recognizes certain patterns and properties of information processing in known data

using artificial neuronal networks (neurons and their interconnections) and learns to pre­

dict these accordingly for unknown data sets. 

Node Computers  The information that is passed from computer to computer on the

Internet is bundled at central points. These central computers are then called Internet nodes. 

NP Problems (Non-deterministic Polynomial Complexity)  Mathematical problems

that are very computationally expensive and whose possibilities lead combinatorially to an

18  Glossary