Bioinformatics For Dummies

"A painless and thorough introduction to the field."
–Jim Kent, Research Scientist, UC Santa Cruz

Related Web site helps you find the best tools

Get an overview, choose the right databases, or analyze sequences like a pro

Whether you're baffled by bioinformatics or just weary of wandering the Web, you've come to the right place. This friendly volume is like chatting with the experts. You'll get bioinformatics basics plus a cookbook of cool ideas, tips on tools, directions to the best Web sites, and shortcuts to great results – all in plain English!

Praise for Bioinformatics For Dummies

"The authors cover practical and theoretical aspects of a wide range of bioinformatics tools with remarkable clarity and humor. This book is a painless and thorough introduction to the field."
– Jim Kent, Author of GigAssembler, used in the Human Genome Project

Introduction.

Part I: Getting Started in Bioinformatics.

Chapter 1: Finding Out What Bioinformatics Can Do for You.

Chapter 2: How Most People Use Bioinformatics.

Part II: A Survival Guide to Bioinformatics.

Chapter 3: Using Nucleotide Sequence Databases.

Chapter 4: Using Protein and Specialized Sequence Databases.

Chapter 5: Working with a Single DNA Sequence.

Chapter 6: Working with a Single Protein Sequence.

Part III: Becoming a Pro in Sequence Analysis.

Chapter 7: Similarity Searches on Sequence Databases.

Chapter 8: Comparing Two Sequences.

Chapter 9: Building a Multiple Sequence Alignment.

Chapter 10: Editing and Publishing Alignments.

Part IV: Becoming a Specialist: Advanced Bioinformatics Techniques.

Chapter 11: Working with Protein 3–D Structures.

Chapter 12: Working with RNA.

Chapter 13: Building Phylogenetic Trees.

Part V: The Part of Tens.

Chapter 14: The Ten Commandments When Using Servers.

Chapter 15: Some Useful Bioinformatics Resources.

Glossary.

Index.

Jean–Michel Claverie, PhD, is one of the founders of modern bioinformatics and has written over 100 articles.

Cedric Notredame, PhD, is a researcher at France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and a group leader of the Swiss Bioinformatics Institute.

Bioinformatics is about searching biological databases, comparing sequences, looking at protein structures and more generally, asking biological questions with a computer. The bioinf. we showned in this book can save you months of work. This book is here to help you get things done. For every standard bioinf. task you may want to undertake, you'll find a detailed steps list that can use to quickly produce the result you need.