From Book News, Inc.
A textbook for researchers and students in molecular biology who want to understand the programs or methods they use, and for computer scientists who want to learn how algorithms are used to address central problems in molecular biology. Readers are assumed to have a basic knowledge of mathematics, but no background in computer science or programming.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Book Description
Genomics and bioinformatics play an increasingly important and transformative role in medicine, society and agriculture. The mapping of the human genome has revealed 35,000 or so genes which might code for more than one protein, resulting in 100,000 proteins for the humans alone. Since proteins are attractive targets for developing drugs, efforts are now underway to map sequences and assign functions to many novel proteins. This book takes the novel approach to cover both the sequence and structure analysis of proteins in one volume and from an algorithmic perspective. Key features of the book include: - Provides a comprehensive introduction to the analysis of protein sequence and structure analysis.
- Takes an algorithmic approach, relying on computational methods rather than theoretical.
- Provides an integrated presentation of theory, examples, exercises and applications.
- Includes coverage of both protein structure, and sequence, analysis.
- Accessible enough for biologists, yet rigorous enough for computer scientists and mathematicians.
- Supported by a Web site featuring exercises, solutions, images, and computer programs.
Visit this website for exercises with solutions, computer programs, errata and additional material: http://www.ii.uib.no/proteinbioinformatics/
Book Info
Univ. of Bergen, Norway. Covers both the sequence and structure analysis of proteins from an algorithmic perspective. Offers an introduction to the analysis of protein sequences and structures and provides an integrated presentation of methodology, examples, exercises, and applications. Suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in bioinformatics.
From the Back Cover
Bioinformatics is the study of biological information and biological systems – such as of the relationships between the sequence, structure and function of genes and proteins. The subject has seen tremendous development in recent years, and there are ever-increasing needs for good understanding of quantitative methods in the study of proteins. Protein Bioinformatics: An Algorithmic Approach to Sequence and Structure Analysis takes the novel approach of covering both the sequence and structure analysis of proteins in one volume and from an algorithmic perspective. - Provides a comprehensive introduction to the analysis of protein sequences and structures.
- Provides an integrated presentation of methodology, examples, exercises and applications.
- Emphasises the algorithmic rather than mathematical aspects of the methods described.
- Covers comparison and alignment of protein sequences and structures as well as protein structure prediction focusing on threading approaches.
- Written in an accessible yet rigorous style, suitable for biologists, mathematicians and computer scientists alike.
- Suitable both for developers and users of bioinformatics tools.
- Supported by a Web site featuring exercises, solutions, images, and computer programs.
Protein Bioinformatics: An Algorithmic Approach to Sequence and Structure Analysis is ideally suited for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of bioinformatics, statistics, mathematics and computer science. It also provides an excellent introduction and reference source on the subject for practitioners and researchers. Rating 3.5
Good introduction for undergraduates or as reference.The book 'Protein Bioinformatics' tries to cover all aspects of proteins, from sequence to structure. This is of course a very wide field and the difficulty of the algorithms involved in this analysis increases from sequence to structure investigations. From the preface of the book one can read, that this is still not enough for the authors because additionally they are trying to write this book for a broad audience, for researchers and students.
After reading this book I think it could be used by undergraduate students in Bioinformatics or related fields or as reference. It does not give deep and clear explanations but rather provides short summaries of articles. The good thing is after reading this book you know of the existence of these articles and can consult them to understand the working mechanism of the algorithms in detail.
There is certainly a lack in good books about proteins and especially about protein structure analysis which can partly filled by this book.Good intro, but light presentationThis book gives good, basic coverage of the concepts important in understanding protein sequence and structure.
There are three major sections in this book: sequence, structure, and the relatinship between the two. The sequence section covers all the basics: dynamic programming for string matching, scoring matrices, trees and classification, and profiles of various sorts. The sequence discussion is a bit shorter, but goes over substructures, similarity searching and scoring, and kinds of structures and domains. The third section is even shorter and unites the two areas: predicting structure from sequence, with a good introduction to threading.
The book's strength is its breadth. It sacrifices depth to get that breadth, though. A few analytic techniques are sketched in the text or presented in psuedocode. Most often, however, a programmer will have a hard time gleaning enough detail from this to implement any of the algorithms described.
The authors aim at readers who already understand the significance of protein structure and who are comfortable with ideas like hydrogen bonding. Lots of programmers will have a hard time understanding why problems are important or what the driving phenomena are. Biologists won't be put off by an excessively mathematical treatment, but won't get a detailed understanding of the algorithms or mathematical foundations either. This book comes close to under-serving both kinds of reader.
This book is good for conceptual understanding of the algorithms, where implementable details don't matter, and gives good coverage to protein-specific issues. It's decidedly for someone who wants more than just the how-to of running BLAST or strucuture analysis tools. I think this book will help most if you want more understanding of what goes on inside the tools, or if you want an easy start to a deep and complex topic. Advanced readers may not like it, though - detail and real understanding just aren't there. I give this one four stars, but I had to round up to four.
//wiredwerid |
