In article <df0b1de1.0306171513.68b4722b at posting.google.com>,
David Murphy wrote:
> Hi - I am considering taking my broad experience in computer science
> and retraining to some degree the areas of bioinformatics/
> computational biology. I have very little biology knowledge at all..
>> I am interested in finding a book that I can read to get an
> introduction to this field. Most books I have seen so far appear to be
> for biologists needing to gain computer science skills. EG how to
> setup Linux, program in Pearl etc which I *DONT* need.
>> I would appreciate any recommendations for books that will introduce
> someone with a strong and broad computer science background to the
> bioinformatics area of study. I need knowledge on the prerequisite
> biology concepts and the types of problems in that
> bioinformatics/computational biology is addressing via computer
> science etc.
Depends what level you are looking for.
The Cartoon Guide to Genetics is a good beginning, and Campbell and
Reece's "Biology" book seems like a good freshman-level text.
The best text on bioinformatics for CS people that I know is
Biological Sequence Analysis:
Probabilistic Models of Proteins and Nucleic Acids
from Cambridge University Press by
R. Durbin, S. Eddy, A. Krogh, and G. Mitchison.
We use this as a text in the bioinformatics classes at UCSC, for
seniors and first-year grads.
For more info about specific problems people are trying to solve,
you'll need to go to the journal literature. Try browsing a year's
worth of "Bioinformatics", for example. If you are more theoretically
inclined, you could try the "Journal of Computational Biology". There
are a number of other journals just starting up, but I don't know what
flavor they'll develop nor how long they'll last.
--
Kevin Karplus karplus at soe.ucsc.eduhttp://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.
