Instant Notes Bioinformatics


ISBN: 1859962726

Author(s): Westhead, D.R., Parish, J.H., Twyman R.M.

TOC:

  • Overview of Bioinformatics
  • Data Acquisition
  • Databases - Contents, Structure and Annotation
  • Retrieval of Biological Data
  • Searching Sequence Databases by Sequence Similarity Criteria
  • Multiple Sequence Alignment: Gene and Protein Families
  • Phylogenetics
  • Sequence Annotation
  • Structural Bioinformatics
  • Microarray Data Analysis
  • Proteomic Data Analysis
  • Cheminformatics in Biology
  • Bioinformatics in the Pharmaceutical Industry
  • Basic Principles of Computing in Bioinformatics

Paperback, 272 pages, 150 b/w line drawings; 2002; Series: Instant Notes; BIOS Scientific Publishers

This is a concise account that will be useful for both learning and revision of the material at the level of the third year undergraduate of first year PhD student. It claims to be comprehensive, but this depends on the definition of bioinformatics, which is a movable feast. It should be clearly under!!stood that this is a biochemist's account, not a geneticist's: the organism is largely ignored. The is no mention of phenotypes, genetic linkage, or mapping of any sort.

Section A defines the scope (of the book, rather than bioinformatics if my comments above are accepted). In Section B we are then told about sequencing, structure determination, gene and protein expression and protein interactions that represent the main experimental methods of data generation. Sections C-D explain how the data are organized in databases and how information is retrieved with the powerful Entrez and SRS systems. Sections E-H deal with sequence analysis including FASTA and BLAST, multiple alignment, phylogeny and genome annotation. Section I is a long treatment of protein structural models and prediction. [It is not clear to me why E-H was not a single section or vice versa that I was not split, but this is merely a presentational issue.] Sections J-K deal with RNA expression and protein expression and protein identification by mass spectrometry. Section L deals with pathways and interactions, which is the culmination of the preceding and the attempt to convert data into biological knowledge. Finally, sections M-N deal with chemoinformatics and drug discovery, where commercially valuable applications lie. Section O on computing could have been omitted.

Martin Bishop. HGMP, UK.

 
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