Customer Reviews

Handbook of Computational Molecular Biology (Chapman & Hall/CRC Computer & Information Science Series)

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Computational is a new and rapidly changing field as new research and techniques are being developed on an almost daily basis. It is to the credit of the author and publisher that they have been able to put together such a complete and well organized handbook this early.

Clearly this field is not ready for a standard text to have been developed, indeed it is clearly too much for even one writer. Instead, the editor calls this 'truly a community effort, with the chapters authored by leading researchers widely recognized for their research contributions and expertise.'

In all there are 38 specific chapters organized into eight major parts. The parts are: Sequence Alignments, String Data Strctures, Genome Assembly and EST Clustering, Genome-Scale Computational Methods, Microarrays and Gene Expression Analysis, Computatinal Structural biology, Bioinformatic Databases and Data Mining. The authors represent a who's who of the major American research establishments as well as from Germany, Italy, Russia, Canada, Japan, Isreal, and India.

The book could be used as a text but is probably more useful to the researcher looking for either an introduction to the field in general or go learn about areas outside his particular area of expertise.

Bioinformatics is too big a field to cover in one book, but this thousand-pager comes close. Its 38 chapters give good summaries of just about every major topic in bioinformatics. Since the table of contents isn't visible here (as of this writing), I'll list the major headings into which the chapters are divided:
* Sequence alignments
* String data structures
* Genome assmebly and EST clustering
* Genome-scale computational methods
* Phylogenetics
* Microarrays and expression analysis
* Computational structural biology
* Bioinformatic databases and data mining

A few things are missing, such as RNA structure prediction and mass spec analysis of proteins. Regulatory networks get only brief mention, perhaps because the topic is still too researchy for any body of accepted practice. These are quibbles, though. The book does a very good job of providing brief surveys of many topics, with an extensive bibliography at the end of each chapter.

This doesn't replace other books that examine specific topics in greater depth. Instead, it provides quick surveys of many topics, and lots of pointers for further information. For the subjects it covers, it's a great starting point.

//wiredweird