Instant Notes in Bioinformatics [Paperback]

D.R. Westhead (Author), J. H. Parish (Author), R.M. Twyman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 16, 2002 | ISBN-10: 1859962726 | ISBN-13: 978-1859962725 | Edition: 1

Instant Notes in Bioinformatics describes what is possible, and the strengths, limitations and potential pitfalls of methods and analyses. The book begins by describing data generation and databases. Following this it takes us to the newer bioinformatics problems associated with structures, expression, proteomics, interactions and pathways. The important areas in bioinformatics are covered to encourage easy learning and revision.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dr David Westheand and Dr Howard Parish, School of Biochemistry and Microbiology, University of Leeds

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis; 1 edition (October 16, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859962726
• ISBN-13: 978-1859962725
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,244,517 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Concise primer. Not bad., December 8, 2003

By 

Seungwoo Hwang (Albany, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Instant Notes in Bioinformatics (Paperback)

If you want a concise primer on bioinformatics, then this book may be of interest. I read this book as a review, but it seems that it may serve well for newcomers alike.

Compared to other primers such as "Developing Bioinformatics Computer Skills", this book contains less unnecessasary figures (e.g., central dogma, etc.), covers wider range of topics, tries to be less verbose.

A drawback is that there is little description at an algorithmic level (e.g., dynamic programming). However, the book does a pretty good job in conveying the main ideas about what such algorithms do and why they are needed. I like this book's concise and accurate presentation style much better than lengthy and confusing style found in many other books (e.g., Bioinformatics - David Mount). Another drawback is that font is small.

Overall, this book is not bad. I think this book's preface tells you what you can expect from this book, so below I excerpted a paragraph.

"We will tell you how to do things, but this is not a software manual for commonly used packages. They have their own manuals that are (mostly) much better than anything we could provide. Many of the methods we describe rely on quite complex mathematical, statistical or computational techniques. Often we choose not to describe these at all, but where we do we have aimed for a simple conceptual understanding."