Bioinformatics Challenges At The Interface Of Biology And Computer Science

This innovative book provides a completely fresh exploration of bioinformatics, investigating its complex interrelationship with biology and computer science. It approaches bioinformatics from a unique perspective, highlighting interdisciplinary gaps that often trap the unwary. The book considers how the need for biological databases drove the evolution of bioinformatics; it reviews bioinformatics basics (including database formats, data-types and current analysis methods), and examines key topics in computer science (including data-structures, identifiers and algorithms), reflecting on their use and abuse in bioinformatics. Bringing these disciplines together, this book is an essential read for those who wish to better understand the challenges for bioinformatics at the interface of biology and computer science, and how to bridge the gaps. It will be an invaluable resource for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, and for lecturers, researchers and professionals with an interest in this fascinating, fast-moving discipline and the knotty problems that surround it.

This innovative book provides a completely fresh exploration of bioinformatics, investigating its complex interrelationship with biology and computer science. It approaches bioinformatics from a unique perspective, highlighting interdisciplinary gaps that often trap the unwary. The book considers how the need for biological databases drove the evolution of bioinformatics; it reviews bioinformatics basics (including database formats, data-types and current analysis methods), and examines key topics in computer science (including data-structures, identifiers and algorithms), reflecting on their use and abuse in bioinformatics. Bringing these disciplines together, this book is an essential read for those who wish to better understand the challenges for bioinformatics at the interface of biology and computer science, and how to bridge the gaps. It will be an invaluable resource for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, and for lecturers, researchers and professionals with an interest in this fascinating, fast-moving discipline and the knotty problems that surround it.

Advances in computer science and technology and in biology over the last several years have opened up the possibility for computing to help answer fundamental questions in biology and for biology to help with new approaches to computing. Making the most of the research opportunities at the interface of computing and biology requires the active participation of people from both fields. While past attempts have been made in this direction, circumstances today appear to be much more favorable for progress. To help take advantage of these opportunities, this study was requested of the NRC by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Energy. The report provides the basis for establishing cross-disciplinary collaboration between biology and computing including an analysis of potential impediments and strategies for overcoming them. The report also presents a wealth of examples that should encourage students in the biological sciences to look for ways to enable them to be more effective users of computing in their studies.

Comprehensive and concise, this handbook has chapters on computing visualization, large database designs, advanced pattern matching and other key bioinformatics techniques. It is a practical guide to computing in the growing field of Bioinformatics--the study of how information is represented and transmitted in biological systems, starting at the molecular level.

The heart of the book lies in the collaboration efforts of eight distinct bioinformatics teams that describe their own unique approaches to data integration and interoperability. Each system receives its own chapter where the lead contributors provide precious insight into the specific problems being addressed by the system, why the particular architecture was chosen, and details on the system's strengths and weaknesses. In closing, the editors provide important criteria for evaluating these systems that bioinformatics professionals will find valuable. * Provides a clear overview of the state-of-the-art in data integration and interoperability in genomics, highlighting a variety of systems and giving insight into the strengths and weaknesses of their different approaches.-

Discover how to streamline complex bioinformatics applications with parallel computing This publication enables readers to handle more complex bioinformatics applications and larger and richer data sets. As the editor clearly shows, using powerful parallel computing tools can lead to significant breakthroughs in deciphering genomes, understanding genetic disease, designing customized drug therapies, and understanding evolution. A broad range of bioinformatics applications is covered with demonstrations on how each one can be parallelized to improve performance and gain faster rates of computation. Current parallel computing techniques and technologies are examined, including distributed computing and grid computing. Readers are provided with a mixture of algorithms, experiments, and simulations that provide not only qualitative but also quantitative insights into the dynamic field of bioinformatics. Parallel Computing for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology is a contributed work that serves as a repository of case studies, collectively demonstrating how parallel computing streamlines difficult problems in bioinformatics and produces better results. Each of the chapters is authored by an established expert in the field and carefully edited to ensure a consistent approach and high standard throughout the publication. The work is organized into five parts: * Algorithms and models * Sequence analysis and microarrays * Phylogenetics * Protein folding * Platforms and enabling technologies Researchers, educators, and students in the field of bioinformatics will discover how high-performance computing can enable them to handle more complex data sets, gain deeper insights, and make new discoveries.

Computers have become an essential component of modern biology. They help to manage the vast and increasing amount of biological data and continue to play an integral role in the discovery of new biological relationships. This in silico approach to biology has helped to reshape the modern biological sciences. With the biological revolution now among us, it is imperative that each scientist develop and hone today’s bioinformatics skills, if only at a rudimentary level. Bioinformatics Methods and Protocols was conceived as part of the Methods in Molecular Biology series to meet this challenge and to provide the experienced user with useful tips and an up-to-date overview of current developments. It builds upon the foundation that was provided in the two-volume set published in 1994 entitled Computer Analysis of Sequence Data. We divided Bioinformatics Methods and Protocols into five parts, including a thorough survey of the basic sequence analysis software packages that are available at most institutions, as well as the design and implemen- tion of an essential introductory Bioinformatics course. In addition, we included sections describing specialized noncommercial software, databases, and other resources available as part of the World Wide Web and a stimul- ing discussion of some of the computational challenges biologists now face and likely future solutions.

Mathematics of Bioinformatics: Theory, Methods, and Applications provides a comprehensive format for connecting and integrating information derived from mathematical methods and applying it to the understanding of biological sequences, structures, and networks. Each chapter is divided into a number of sections based on the bioinformatics topics and related mathematical theory and methods. Each topic of the section is comprised of the following three parts: an introduction to the biological problems in bioinformatics; a presentation of relevant topics of mathematical theory and methods to the bioinformatics problems introduced in the first part; an integrative overview that draws the connections and interfaces between bioinformatics problems/issues and mathematical theory/methods/applications.