A comprehensible introduction to the key biological, mathematical, statistical, and computer concepts and tools behind bioinformatics. For physical scientists, the book provides a sound biological framework for understanding the questions a life scientist would ask in the context of currently available computational tools. For life scientists, a complete discussion of the UNIX operating system offers biologists graphical-user-interface comfort in a command-line environment, plus an understanding of the installation and management of UNIX-based software tools. In the applications sections the book provides a common meeting ground for life and physical scientists. Here they will find examples of the management and analysis of DNA sequencing projects, the modeling of DNA as a statistical series of patterns, various methods of pattern discovery, protein visualization, and the use of multiple sequence alignment to infer both functional and structural biological relationships. An accompanying CD contains several full and limited trial-versions of the programs discussed in the text, as well as a complete set of illustrations from each chapter suitable for lectures and presentations..
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