"Bioinformatics is conceptualizing biology in terms of molecules   (in the sense 
     physical-chemistry)and then applying "informatics" techniques (derived from 
     disciplines such as applied Math, CS and Statistics) to understand and organize 
   the information associated  with these molecules, on a large-scale."

                                                    -by Mark Gerstein

http://www.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk/CCP11/tutorials.txt.html#11

  *  the development of new algorithms and statistics with  which to
            assess relationships among members of large data sets;
  * the analysis and interpretation of various types of data
           including nucleotide and amino acid sequences, protein domains
            and protein structures; and
  * the development and implementation of tools that enable
           efficient access and management of different types of
           information.