Introduction to Bioinformatics

Description

Bioinformatics, the application of computers in the biological sciences, especially analysis of biological sequence data, is becoming an essential tool in molecular biology as genome projects generate vast quantities of data. With new sequences being added to DNA databases on an average of once a minute, there is a pressing need to convert this information into biochemical and biophysical knowledge by deciphering the structural, functional and evolutionary clues encoded in the language of biological sequences.

Key Features

• Unique guide to bioinformatics linked to an interactive practical on the World Wide Web
• Introduces key databases, tools and resources, and outlines pitfalls of methods
• The Web link integrates conventional and Web-based publishing, allowing interactive exploration of concepts discussed in the book
• Includes numerous Further Reading suggestions, Web references and a useful Glossary

Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Introduction
3. Information networks
4. Protein information resources
5. Genome information resources
6. DNA sequence analysis
7. Pairwise alignment techniques
8. Multiple sequence alignment
9. Secondary database searching
10. Building a sequence search protocol
11. Analysis packages
12. Probability and statistics

Authors Biography

Dr Teresa K. Attwood is a Royal Society University Researchfellow and Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Manchester, UK, Visiting Fellow at the EuropeanBioinformatics Institute, and author and curator of the PRINTSprotein fingerprint database.

Dr David J. Parry-Smith is Informatics Director at CambridgeDrug Discovery Limited, Cambridge, UK, and works mainly withalgorithm development.

Dr Samiron Phukan is Senior Scientist, SDMD Drug Discoveryat Jubilant Biosys Limited, Bangalore, India.