Bioinformatics--the application of computational and analytical methods to biological problems--is a rapidly evolving scientific discipline. Genome sequencing projects are producing vast amounts of biological data for many different organisms, and, increasingly, storing these data in public databases. Such biological databases are growing exponentially, along with the biological literature. It's impossible for even the most zealous researcher to stay on top of necessary information in the field without the aid of computer-based tools. Bioinformatics is all about building these tools.

Developing Bioinformatics Computer Skills is for scientists and students who are learning computational approaches to biology for the first time, as well as for experienced biology researchers who are just starting to use computers to handle their data. The book covers the Unix file system, building tools and databases for bioinformatics, computational approaches to biological problems, an introduction to Perl for bioinformatics, data mining, and data visualization.

Written in a clear, engaging style, Developing Bioinformatics Computer Skills will help biologists develop a structured approach to biological data as well as the tools they'll need to analyze the data.

This book is a real broad swatch of all the different skills that one needs to know to assume a basic competency in bioinformatics. On page 14, they actually list core essential skills and "nice to have skills". molecular biology, Unix, Perl, algorithms, major biology software packages are all on the essential core list. The auuthors really take the viewpoint on here is how to set your computer up (on a budget!), web sites to go to and so on. Not knowing Unix and not having it currently on my computer made the two Unix/Linux chapters academic.

The book is great from the perspective of seeing the big picture. Where it falls down is in the depth department. "Predicting Protein Structure and Function from Sequence" is covered in 35 pages! It is impossible to understand this subject in 35 pages - yet the authors conveyed a sense of the subject and how it fits into a larger picture.

If you are familiar with the subject and want in depth treatment, this is not the book.

if you want an introduction "big picture" book this could serve your needs.

43 of 50 found the following review helpful:


Useful but can be misleading  Jun 18, 2001
Bioinformatics as we know it today is a conglomerate of quasi-scientific activity, software development and data management. Of course the field is still in making and the concepts of "scientific activity", "software development" and "data management" are neither well defined nor universally agreed upon by their practitioners.

Gibas and Jambeck attempted to expose an impression about bioinformatics to the readers who want to be employed as bioinformaticians. I am not sure the authors' impression about the skills of bioinformaticians is universally correct. As a bioinformatics manager myself I like computer literate biologists collaborating with professional programmers. I would gladly train seasoned programmers according to Gibas and Jambeck book. However I think biologists would be better prepared for bioinformatics if they wrote some computer programs themselves. It does not matter that routine programs for computing in molecular biology already exist. If a self-learning student would write a primitive version of the program she is going to use, it would prepare her to understand what the program is capable of doing.

I like the book as a potential text for good programmers who want to get a job in bioinformatics. However I think the book will mislead all readers who want to become computer-literate biologists. Unix and Perl are really not important in a long range (operating systems and scripting languages will evolve and change anyway.) Understanding principles of programming and computing does matter infinitely more for these readers even if they are unaware of this reality.

11 of 11 found the following review helpful:


Useful only for a reference book  Dec 02, 2003 By Seungwoo Hwang
We are all well aware that it is impossible to write a book on bioinformatics satisfying all types of readers. That is the reason why we are spending much time on finding a book that we can say "This book is just for me!"

Well, this book is not a self-teaching book by itself. Don't expect that things will become clear to understand after reading this book.

If your expectation is just to taste flavor of bioinformatics and to use it as a reference book, then this book is right for you.

31 of 37 found the following review helpful:


Very Useful, Excellent Value  Nov 17, 2001 By LOODY
I've seen quite a few reviews on bioinformatics books, and I think it's important to mention that this book is NOT for those people who really know their way around bioinformatics. It's NOT for people who have a pretty good idea WHY they're doing bioinformatics. These people usually know what they want to do, whether it's molecular phylogenetics, or developing search algorithm software....... whatever. They have a better feel for the field (which is a diverse one, by the way), and have high, sometimes arrogant, expectations of any book that deals with bioinformatics because they are always on the lookout for specific answers to their specific questions. They want books like Pierre Baldi's or the (in)famous Durbin textbook on sequence analysis algorithms, books which for the most part, are pretty damn inaccessible at first and downright scary to look at to people like myself who want to familiarise with bioinformatics and see what all the hype is about. Those are NOT texts to check out if you are totally new to all this. Now for people who don't really know anything significant about the field and, who for all intensive purposes, are generally CLUELESS about what it deals with in particular, like myself before I bought this book, it's worth buying this text to get an excellent intro on what bioinformatics is all about, and the kind of biological problems it addresses. The text is neither a programming bible, nor a manual on pairwise alignment techniques or RNA structure/function prediction. What it does do well is to give you a very good feel for what this field is about, as well as the confidence to start hitting the 'real' bioinformatics books that are aplenty out there. It will help you decide whether you are willing to do computational biology and really interested in it. It's the only book I know that does that, that can serve as a proper primer on bioinformatics. I suspect Gibas and Jambeck's book can also serve as a decent reference guide for the more seasoned bioinformaticians out there. It's a handy book and covers a little of everything, and I recommend reading it along with Attwood and Parry-Smith's introductory text, maybe following it up with Kanehisa's Post-Genome Informatics (2000). In any case, finally somebody came up with a book explaining the field that's actually from Planet Earth. It's very accessible, reasonably priced, and for that I am grateful to the authors.

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