Overview and aims. This book is intended as a self-contained guide to the entire ?eld of bioinformatics, interpreted as the application of information science to - ology. There is strong underlying belief that information is a profound concept underlying biology, and familiarity with the concepts of information should make it possible to gain many important new insights into biology. In other words, the vision underpinning this book goes beyond the narrow interpretation of bioinf- matics sometimes encountered, which may con?ne itself to speci?c tasks such as the attempted identi?cation of genes in a DNA sequence. Organization and features. The chapters are grouped into three parts, cov- ing the relevant fundamentals of information science, overviewing all of biology, and surveying applications. Thus Part I (fundamentals) carefully explains what - formation is, and discusses attributes such as value and quality, and its multiple signi?cations of accuracy, meaning, and effect. The transmission of information through channels is described. Brief summaries of the necessary elements of set theory, combinatorics, probability, likelihood, clustering, and pattern recognition are given. Conceptssuch as randomness,complexity,systems and networks,needed fortheunderstandingofbiologicalorganization,arealso discussed. PartII(biology) covers both organismal (ontogeny and phylogeny,as well as genome structure) and molecular aspects. Part III (applications) is devoted to the most important prac- cal applications of bioinformatics, notably gene identi?cation, transcriptomics, p- teomics, interactomics (dealing with networks of interactions), and metabolomics.
Bioinformatics is interpreted as the application of information science to biology, in which it plays a fundamental and all-pervasive role. The field continues to develop intensively in both academia and commercially, and is highly interdisciplinary. This broad-ranging and thoroughly updated second edition covers new findings while retaining the successful formula of the original text.
Bioinformatics: An Introduction (2nd Edition) is structured into three parts devoted to Information, Biology, and Applications. Every section of the book has been completely revised for currency, and expanded where relevant, to take account of significant new discoveries and realizations of the importance of key concepts. Furthermore, two new chapters provide instruction about algorithms and knowledge representation. Emphases are placed on the underlying fundamentals and on acquisition of a broad and comprehensive grasp of the field as a whole.
Features:
Provides a solid foundation in, and self-contained introduction to, the field of bioinformatics and its state-of-the-art as it relates to computational biology research
Offers additional chapters on algorithms and knowledge representation, including text mining[NEW]
Imparts a thorough grounding of core concepts, enabling the reader to understand contemporary work within an optimal context
Contains a greatly expanded chapter on interactions and regulatory networks [NEW]
Includes examples, definitions, problems and a comprehensive and useful bibliography
Presents new experimental methods, and serves as a springboard for new research[NEW]
Incorporates discussion of the method of drawing inferences from abstract sequence analysis based on frequency dictionaries
Contains an extensively revised chapter on medical applications [NEW]
Emphasizes the underlying fundamentals and acquisition of a broad and comprehensive grasp of the field as a whole
This significantly improved second edition of a successful textbook is intended to be a complete study companion for the advanced undergraduate or graduate student. It is self-contained, bringing together the multiple disciplines necessary for a profound grasp of the field into a coherent whole, thereby allowing the reader to gain much insight into the state-of-the-art of bioinformatics.
