Bioinformatics: A Practical Guide to the Analysis of Genes and Proteins [Hardcover]

Andreas D. Baxevanis (Editor), B. F. Francis Ouellette (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 22, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0471324418 | ISBN-13: 978-0471324416 | Edition: 1

"A reference that should be in the personal library of any biologist who uses the Internet for the analysis of DNA and protein sequence data" --Science

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A reference that should be in the personal library of any biologist who uses the Internet for the analysis of DNA and protein sequence data"—Science

"This book is a rich source of information on an exciting new research field. The book's practical orientation and lack of mathematical detail should make it particularly appealing to professional geneticists." --The Quarterly Review of Biology, June 1999

Review

"A useful introduction to biologists, with a particularly strong introduction to the tools available from the NCBI."
—Russ B. Altman, MD, PhD, Stanford University Medical Center --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 370 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-Interscience; 1 edition (July 22, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471324418
• ISBN-13: 978-0471324416
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,521,380 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars from NATURE STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY review (Dec 99), December 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Bioinformatics: A Practical Guide to the Analysis of Genes and Proteins (Paperback)

"The novice user of bioinformatics tools needs a guide that answers several fundamental questions - what are these tools designed for and what can they do; what are their limitations; how does one access them, and where can one find further information. For each of the basic sub-fields of bioinformatics, Bioinformatics provides a survey, a list of world wide web addresses (URLs), and a list of monographs and reviews to which the reader may go for further information. Each chapter covers fundamental definitions and makes no assumptions about prior knowledge.... The book provides a broad overview of the basic tools for sequence analysis. It is a good starting point for the reader who wants to learn about the types of tools used in bioinfomatics and how to get started. For biologists approaching this subject for the first time, it will be a very useful handbook to keep on the shelf after the first reading, close to the computer." --Terry Gaasterland, The Rockefeller University

47 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Mileading, disappointing, useless, June 27, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Bioinformatics: A Practical Guide to the Analysis of Genes and Proteins, Second Edition (Paperback)

Baxevanis and Ouellete apparently convinced some of their colleagues from NIH (and a few others) to publish user manuals for selected computer programs in the form of edited book. The idea itself is valuable provided that the complete collection of meaningful software is described competently and honestly. Unfortunately the content of this book is limited mostly to the software developed by NCBI and to analyses performed on the UNIX-based workstations. There is almost no coverage of other bioinformatics software (except for the GCG package which contains software and database tools common with NCBI anyway.)

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the book is lack of description of the fundamentals of sequence analysis. With the exception of Chapter 10 one cannot learn sequence analysis from this volume. Nor would it be advisable to use it as a desk reference to find appropriate citations of published sequence analysis work. A vast majority of references cited is biased. Merits of the citations' content do not seem to matter to the editors and that makes their book almost useless for the would-be practitioners.

I hasten to admonish that the book appears to be primarily a software marketing material and not an effort to educate or otherwise empower the reader. I am surprised that the material covered by the book is not distributed free of charge via Internet or other publicly available means. 9 out of 16 contributors (I refer here to the first edition) are actively working for the US Government at the time of writing. Still their chapters appear to be copyrighted by the publisher instead of being in public domain. But these are all minor problems comparing to the misgivings of the book's content mentioned in the first two paragraphs of this note.

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Poor as an introduction to the field, May 22, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Bioinformatics: A Practical Guide to the Analysis of Genes and Proteins, Second Edition (Paperback)

The purpose of the book appears to be to provide a broad overview of current public bioinformatics tools. If one is interested to find pointers to software that addresses a specific bioinformatics question, the book does a reasonable job of showing what was available at the end of 2000. However, this approach has two major shortcomings. First, the principles and main scientific ideas associated with each covered area are only glossed over. Second, there is a chronic lack of depth in the presentation of any particular method. Because of these two problems the book is useless to the novice and makes a poor choice as a textbook for an introductory bioinformatics course. The best chapter is #14 on phylogenetic analysis, which emphasizes the strategies of data analysis and potential misinterpretations of the results. An embarrassing addition to the second edition is a chapter on Perl, which I doubt will be useful to any type of reader. Another chapter, which would have been better left out is #1, an introduction to the internet. It may have been appropriate for the first edition, but the material is too simplistic for the present.