1. Bioinformatics is the science of using computer hardware and software to analyze biological data such as DNA sequences, protein sequences, and gene expression data.
2. It has three main branches - genomics which analyzes genome sequences, transcriptomics which analyzes gene expression data, and proteomics which analyzes protein sequences and structures.
3. The goals of bioinformatics include acquiring biological data, developing tools and databases, analyzing the data, and integrating different types of biological data to gain new biological insights.