Transcript book review - People.cs.uchicago.edu

Different views of bioinformatics
CS view: what are the algorithms, data
structures and other concepts needed to
develop tools to solve biological problems
 Biologist view: how to use tools to solve
typical problems of interest in biology
 More theoretical view: what new
algorithms are suggested by biological
applications

Too much for one quarter
Genomics: DNA, RNA
Protein structure, function and interactions
Drug design
Algorithms for sequence alignment
Tree representations of relationships
Gene microarrays
Proteomics/Mass spec
Protein structure prediction
Our runner-up course book
"Protein Bioinformatics : An Algorithmic
Approach to Sequence and Structure
Analysis"Ingvar Eidhammer; Hardcover;
$69.86
 Takes the CS point of view
 Limited to issues regarding proteins
 Too many errors for my comfort zone
Background reference
"Protein Stucture and Function (Primers in
Biology)” Gregory A. Petsko and Dagmar
Ringe; Paperback; $47.66
Excellent material on basic biology (great
pictures!) but not bioinformatics.
 Describes how proteins function
 Good reference for biochemistry of
proteins and their function
Biologist-focused book
"Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics"
Jonathan Pevsner; Paperback; $72.16
 “First class had 80 grad students and
several hundred auditors” at Johns
Hopkins
 Presents “how to use” bioinfo tools from
the perspective of a biomedical researcher
 Not so much on how the algorithms work
but a good way to see how they are used
Comprehensive reference
"Bioinformatics: A Practical Guide to the
Analysis of Genes and Proteins, Third
Edition"Andreas D. Baxevanis and B. F.
Francis Ouellette, eds; Hardcover; $60.00
This is an edited collection of essays by
experts on the use of different bioinfo tools
in different areas.
Intended as a reference (not a textbook)
Just the algorithms
"An Introduction to Bioinformatics
Algorithms (Computational Molecular
Biology)” Neil C. Jones; Hardcover;
$42.67
 More of a focus on algorithms, with less
coverage of applications
 The next step in the CS direction in
bioinformatics (e.g., PhD level course)