Category Archives: Biology

Perl As Programming Language of Choice for Biologists!!

Perl as Programming Language of Choice for Biologists!!

Posted on 28 October 2013

Why Biologists (Bioinformaticians or Bioinformaticists, if the scientific jargon is to be preferred) Prefer Perl?

I am a bioinformaticist, and love Perl over all other computer languages when it comes to programming in biology. This is not only my case, majority of the biologists prefer Perl for their bioinformatics’ tasks. Perl can be given the status of being the mainstay programming language in the field of Bioinformatics (sometimes known as Computational Biology). There must be some reasons why this is the case; actually there are some very strong points that favor the use of Perl in biology over the other lot of available programming languages. But, to be honest, at times, other computer programming languages can be of more benefit than Perl, at least for a specific task. If you are not acquainted with Perl, click here for, what the heck is Perl? In this article, I will explain why it is justified to consider Perl as programming language of choice for biologists, and for the sake of information, I would like to tell that even the non-biologists too prefer it much!

Continue reading

The Hedgehog the Spiny Ball adidarwinian

The Hedgehog – the Spiny Ball!!

The Hedgehog – the Spiny Ball!!


A Piece of Poetry, from the Pen of an Earnest Biologist (Aditya Sardana aka Adidarwinian), dedicated to The Hedgehog – the Spiny Ball!!


“Look out under the log,

There lives a hedgehog,
It does not appear when the Sun shines,
Only to appear in the night as a ball of spines.”


Hedgehogs are found in the Europe, Africa, and Asia. Hedgehogs are the insectivorous (feeding on insects; insectivores) animals belonging to the subfamily Erinaceinae of the family Erinaceidae of the order Erinaceomorpha of the class Mammalia. Other members of the family Erinaceidae include the gymnures (subfamily Galericinae). The name “hedgehog” comes from its occurrence in the hedges or hedgerows, the pig-like (hog-like) snout, and the pig-like deep guttural sound made by it while searching for food.

Continue reading