Customer Reviews

Biological Sequence Analysis: Probabilistic Models of Proteins and Nucleic Acids

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a very well written overview to hidden Markov models and context-free grammar methods in computational biology. The authors have written a book that is useful to both biologists and mathematicians. Biologists with a background in probability theory equivalent to a senior-level course should be able to follow along without any trouble. The approach the author's take in the book is very intuitive and they motivate the concepts with elementary examples before moving on to the more abstract definitions. Exercises also abound in the book, and they are straightforward enough to work out, and should be if one desires an in-depth understanding of the main text. In addition, there is a software package called HMMER, developed by one of the authors (Eddy) that is in the public domain and can be downloaded from the Internet. The package specifically uses hidden Markov models to perform sequence analysis using the methods outlined in the book.

Probabilistic modeling has been applied to many different areas, including speech recognition, network performance analysis, and computational radiology. An overview of probabilistic modeling is given in the first chapter, and the authors effectively introduce the concepts without heavy abstract formalism, which for completeness they delegate to the last chapter of the book. Bayesian parameter estimation is introduced as well as maximum likelihood estimation. The authors take a pragmatic attitude in the utility of these different approaches, with both being developed in the book.

This is followed by a treatment of pairwise alignment in Chapter Two, which begins with substitution matrices. They point out, via some exercises, the role of physics in influencing particular alignments (hydrophobicity for example). Global alignment via the Gotoh algorithm and local alignment via the Smith-Waterman algorithm, are both discussed very effectively. Finite state machines with accompanying diagrams are used to discuss dynamic programming approaches to sequence alignment. The BLAST and FASTA packages are briefly discussed, along with the PAM and BLOSUM matrices.

Hidden Markov models are treated thoroughly in the next chapter with the Viterbi and Baum-Welch algorithms playing the central role. HIdden Markov models are then used in Chapter 4 for pairwise alignment. State diagrams are again used very effectively to illustrate the relevant ideas. Profile hidden Markov models which, according to the authors are the most popular application of hidden Markov models, are treated in detail in the next chapter. A very surprising application of Voronoi diagrams from computational geometry to weighting training sequences is given.

Several different approaches, such as Barton-Sternberg, CLUSTALW, Feng-Doolittle, MSA, simulated annealing, and Gibbs sampling are applied to multiple sequence alignment methods in Chapter 6. It is very well written, with the only disappointment being that only one exercise is given in the entire chapter. Phylogenetic trees are covered in Chapter 7, with emphasis placed on tree building algorithms using parsimony. The next chapter discusses the same topic from a probabilistic perspective. This to me was the most interesting part of the book as it connects the sequence alignment algorithms with evolutionary models.

The authors switch gears starting with the next chapter on transformational grammars. It is intriguing to see how concepts used in compiler construction can be generalized to the probabilistic case and then applied to computational biology. The PROSITE database is given as an example of the application of regular grammars to sequence matching. This chapter is fascinating reading, and there are some straightforward exercises illustrating the main points.

The last chapter covers RNA structure analysis, which introduces the concept of a pseudoknot. These are not to be confused with the usual knot constructions that can be applied to the topology of DNA, but instead result from the existence of non-nested base pairs in RNA sequences. The authors discuss many other techniques used in RNA sequence analysis and take care to point out which ones are more practical from a computational point of view. Surprisingly, genetic algorithms and algorithms based on Monte Carlo sampling are not discussed in the book, but the authors do give references for the interested reader.

The best attribute of this book is that the authors take a pragmatic point of view of how mathematics can be applied to problems in computational biology. They are not dogmatic about any particular approach, but instead fit the algorithm to the problem at hand.

I picked up this book at the recommendation of a number of colleagues in computational linguistics and speech processing as a way to find out what's going on in biological sequence analysis. I was hoping to learn about applications of the kinds of algorithms I know for handling speech and language, such as HMM decoding and context-free grammar parsing, to biological sequences. This book delivered, as recommended.

As the title implies, "Biological Sequence Analysis" focuses almost exlusively on sequence analysis. After a brief overview of statistics (more a reminder than an introduction), the first half of the book is devoted to alignment algorithms. These algorithms take pairs of sequences of bases making up DNA or sequences of amino acids making up proteins and provide optimal alignments of the sequences or of subsequences according to various statistical models of match likelihoods. Methods analyzed include edit distances with various substitution and gapping penalties (penalties for sections that don't match), Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) for alignment and also for classification against families, and finally, multiple sequence alignment, where alignment is generalized from pairs to sets of sequences. I found the section on building phylogenetic trees by means of hierarchical clustering to be the most fascinating section of the book (especially given its practical application to classifying wine varietals!). The remainder of the book is devoted to higher-order grammars such as context-free grammars, and their stochastic generalization. Stochastic context-free grammars are applied to the analysis of RNA secondary structure (folding). There is a good discussion of the CYK dynamic programming algorithm for non-deterministic context-free grammar parsing; an algorithm that is easily applied to finding the best parse in a probabilistic grammar. The presentations of the dynamic programming algorithms for HMM decoding, edit distance minimization, hierarchical clustering and context-free grammar parsing are as good as I've seen anywhere. They are precise, insightful, and informative without being overly subscripted. The illustrations provided are extremely helpful, including their positioning on pages where they're relevant.

This book is aimed at biologists trying to learn about algorithms, which is clear from the terse descriptions of the underlying biological problems. The technical details were so clear, though, that I was able to easily follow the algorithms even if I wasn't always sure about the genetic applications. After studying some introductions to genetics and coming back to this book, I was able to follow the application discussions much more easily. This book assumes the reader is familiar with algorithms and is comfortable manipulating a lot of statistics; a gentler introduction to exactly the same mathematics and algorithms can be found in Jurafsky and Martin's "Speech and Language Processing". For biologists who want to see how sequence statistics and algorithms applied to language, I would suggest Manning and Schuetze's "Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing". Although it is much more demanding computationally, more details on all of these algorithms, as well as some more background on the biology, along with some really nifty complexity analysis can be found in Dan Gusfield's "Algorithms on Strings, Trees and Sequences".

In these days of fly-by-night copy-editing and typesetting, I really appreciate Cambridge University Press's elegant style and attention to detail. Durbin, Eddy, Krogh and Mitchison's "Biological Sequence Analysis" is as beautiful and readable as it is useful.

This is the best introduction to latest probabilistic sequence analysis methods. However, the book suffers from somewhat convoluted writing and organization. More importantly, it lacks a broader theoretical overview of the different methods. The methods are presented as a bunch of tools without enough critical assessment of their effectiveness or the relative strengths of their underlying theoretical models. I would have welcomed more discussion of how they all fit in a bigger probabilistic picture... what are the different simplifications and assumptions made for the sake of simplicity and computation?

This is that rarest of rare: an intro-level, multi-authored monograph which is thorough, internally consistent, and a joy to read. Unlike the reviewer above, although not the first book I read on the subject, had it been so, I could have saved myself a great deal of time. As an introductory work it is simply unparalleled. In view of the rate of information growth in the field, this reader thinks it deserves to be amended annually, not merely reprinted periodically. The authors and editors are to be congratulated for producing a real gem. Your choice of which of the 30 or so "advanced" (i.e., costing >$60) books on probabilistic sequence analysis will be much more informed if you read this one first.

I bought "Biological Sequence Analysis" for my introductory bioinformatics course. AS the course covers almost everything mentioned in the book I have (almost) finished reading and studying it.

I find this book an excellent textbook but wouldn't consider it a classic. There are some important topics missing or some topics are just briefly touched upon. (e.g. heuristic pairwaise alignment) Maybe it's just because of my theoretical background, but I find that the book does a poor job in explaining/proving the intuition behind certain aspects of the algorithms (e.d. why does a convex gap penalty lead to a different complexity than a strictly increasing gap penalty ...) . On the other hand, the probabilistic foundations of the different techniques is well written.

My final remark is that the book is not fun to read at all. The authors have made no effort to spice up the content with some historical background, some explanations of how the theory fits in the bigger picture ...

Summarized: an excellent textbook for anyone taking a course in bioinformatics but do not use this book to wet your appetite for the field ...

While this is perhaps the best book on Hidden Markov Models in Bioinformatics available, you would do well to read Rabiner's review paper. For me this is the type of book that would put potential students off bioinformatics for life. It is too technical and uses inappropriate notation. It has too many "It is easily shown" phrases which means that actually the real proof would be rather involved. Dynamic programming is not explained very well.

If you have a maths or computer background then go for it but if you prefer your Bio in Bioinformatics then stay well clear and go for Mount.

I am a physicist and had some interest in what these bio informatics actually do. I must say I am impressed both in the rigor and sharpness of the probabilistic reasoning. This book relies heavily on probability theory (especially hidden Markov models) and is clear enough to be read without a sharp pencil. Don't get me wrong it is not simple enough to be good late night bedtime entertainment. The biological and chemical background is also easy to grasp.
The authors are obviously very active in the field they describe. Their self citations seem absolutely reasonable.

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A great reference and a good introduction to many important concepts in sequence analysis. However, if you don't have a reasonable grounding in math you may struggle with the terse notation.

Borodovsky's companion book is an excellent partner for this book. Get both.

I keep coming back to this book for its readable, applicable summaries of basic algorithms.

One chapter covers the basics of dynamic programming for string matching: a staple of bioinformatics computing. The authors come back to it a number of times as they introduce new variations on the string-matching theme. They give about the clearest description of the Needleman-Wunsch and basic variants (including Smith-Waterman) of any book I know.

The bulk of the book is devoted to Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), as one might have guessed in a book with Eddy as co-author. It covers the basics of model construction, motif finding, and various uses for decoding. Again, it covers all the basics so clearly you'll want to start coding as soon as you read it.

The later sections of the book cover phylogeny and tree building, along with the relationships to multiple alignment. Good, solid, clear writing prepares the reader for texts that may be more specialized, but possibly less transparent.

The next-to-last chapter, on RNA folding, is weaker than the ones before, in my opinion. It ties to the other chapters reasonably well in terms of algorithms, but I don't think it does justice to the thermodynamic models of RNA folding. If there is any weakness in this chapter, though, it does not detract from the strengths elsewhere.

The final chapter, the "background on probability", is the one that I think needs the most support. If you don't already understand its topics, I doubt that this will help very much. (If you do understand them, you won 't need the help.) There's nothing inherently tricky about probability, but individual distributions carry many assumptions, and I did not see those spelled out well.

This shouldn't be the only book in your bioinformatics library. If you really want algorithms, though, it's a good book to have in the collection and one you'll keep coming back to.

I will agree and submit: this is an invaluable introduction to the field of bioinformatics. With introductions to everything from sequence analysis to hidden markov models and even a primer on grammars, this is a useful introduction both to biological applications for computer scientists *as well as* computational methods for biologists.

I am in a joint graduate-level biology/computer science class and we are using this book as a foundation to bring both groups up to speed and it seems to be working out nicely.

However, one criticism is that sometimes Durbin et al jump into subjects without an adequate introduction or with one that is overcomplexified. In other words, they sometimes break Einstein's the rule of "make everything as simple as possible but not simpler". Durbin et al do not always make things as simple as possible. And it is annoying when they do not. Especially when I see them confusing the bejebus out of the biology people over computer science concepts that are really not that complicated through overly technical jargon.

But this is rare and they provide many insightful diagrams to clear up their algorithms as well as lucid ways to introduce biological concepts. Sometimes the introduction of an algorithm/theory *and* a biological concept molds together beautifully such that the reader is simultaneously being infused with both. An example of this phenomenon is their dual introduction to CpG islands and markov models.