Book Description
Genetics: From Genes to Genomes is a cutting-edge, introductory genetics text authored by an unparalleled author team, including Nobel Prize winner, Leland Hartwell. The Third Edition continues to build upon the integration of Mendelian and molecular principles, providing students with the links between early genetics understanding and the new molecular discoveries that have changed the way the field of genetics is viewed.
Customer Reviews:
Not for the uninitiated.......2007-07-07
This is a good book if you already have a foundation in genetics. Oddly, the book is marketed as your basic undergrad genetics text. Yet instead of just explaining the concepts, it leads you on the path of discovery of how researchers figured all this stuff out. If you are still learning the subject, you may do better with Klug/Cummings/Spencer. If you are going into higher levels of biology and want to learn some research methods, this is a good book.
Genetics: From Genes to Genomes.......2007-03-09
The book came in very quickly and I am very happy with the purchase.
Book Description
Genetics: From Genes to Genomes is a cutting-edge, introductory genetics text authored by an unparalleled author team, including Nobel Prize winner, Leland Hartwell. The Second Edition continues to build upon the integration of Mendelian and molecular principles, providing students with the links between early genetics understanding and the new molecular discoveries that have changed the way the field of genetics is viewed.
Customer Reviews:
Genetics: From Genes to Genomes.......2006-02-23
Great figures to go with the text. Not a quick read, but it is a great genetics resource.
Genetics: From Genes to Genomes.......2005-02-07
I found this book extremely verbose and unorganized. It would serve as a great reference book for a lab researcher or grad student. But it's way too technical and dense for an introductory genetics class. The authors do a poor job presenting the material in a comprehensible way to an undergraduate genetics student. Not recommended.
Great general Genetics textbook.......2004-12-12
I think this is a great text book for General Genetics class! In fact, this is the text we have been using at UC Berkeley.
The authors are not only clear & concise in delivering their topics, but also able to formulate challenging questions to test students' undestanding.
Genetics concepts well understood.......2003-09-14
Excellent book that goes in depth to the science of genetics.
Book Description
Genetics: Analysis of Genes and Genomes, Sixth Edition by Hartl and Jones presents the modern world of genetics; treating classical, molecular, and population genetics as unified subdisciplines in a field that, even in our post-genomic era, still goes by the name "genetics." This approach to teaching genetics is a logical progression in a time when the various subdisciplines of genetics are so closely interwoven.
Written by two renowned authorities in the field, Genetics, Sixth Edition provides the most current, clear, comprehensive, and balanced introduction to genetics and genomics at the college level. It treats transmission genetics, molecular genetics, and evolutionary genetics as fully integrated subjects, and provides students with an unprecedented understanding of the basic processes of gene transmission, mutation, expression, and regulation. The text also explores the connections between modern and historical experimental methods used by geneticists, and offers valuable insight into the important historical and social context of genetics and genomics.
Customer Reviews:
Horrible Book.......2006-05-24
Absolutely horrible book. Chapters are written very poorly. They don't follow a pattern, but if I had to say there were one it would be tell you the big picture first so you have no idea what they're talking about then go into detail about each of the units and then after you've read the whole chapter you find it useful to reread the beginning again because you now know what the authors are talking about. Inconsistent use of vocabulary as well, they talk in colloquial terms and then all of the sudden use the word 'nascent' for instance, then you never see the word again. Nothing wrong with such things but the lack of consistency in the book makes it extremely poor in my opinion. Very poorly written, the information is there but organization is pathetic
BEAUTIFUL DESCRIPTION ABOUT GENES AND GENOMES ! SUPERB.......2004-10-23
GOOD PICTURE REPRESENTATION WITH EXCELLENT NOTES AND LOTS OF EXTRA INFORMATION ABOUT GENE AND GENOMES . PROBLEMS HAVE SOME ERRORS ITS LITTLE CONFUSING BUT OVERALL A FABALOUS TEXT BOOK OF GENETICS. GOOD FOR STANDARD EXAM PREPARATIONS AND ALSO FOR UNDERGRAD/GRAD STUDENTS . ALL THE BEST CHECK FOR FOR MINNOR ERRORS IN THE TEXT .... TAKE THE BEST OUT OF IT .....
Book Description
As more species' genomes are sequenced, computational analysis of these data has become increasingly important. The second, entirely updated edition of this widely praised textbook provides a comprehensive and critical examination of the computational methods needed for analyzing DNA, RNA, and protein data, as well as genomes. The book has been rewritten to make it more accessible to a wider audience, including advanced undergraduate and graduate students. New features include chapter guides and explanatory information panels and glossary terms. New chapters in this second edition cover statistical analysis of sequence alignments, computer programming for bioinformatics, and data management and mining. Practically oriented problems at the ends of chapters enhance the value of the book as a teaching resource. The book also serves as an essential reference for professionals in molecular biology, pharmaceutical, and genome laboratories.
Customer Reviews:
One of the worst text-books I have ever read.......2007-07-05
I used this book in an introduction level class to bioinformatics and it was worse then useless. The book is much more a survey of literature then anything else and so if you are not already very familiar with the topics the book does not provide enough details for you to get very far at all. Although to be fair most of the books on bioinformatics out at the time and the two years after were not much better, but I felt this was near the bottom of the pile. "Fundamental Concepts of Bioinformatics", ISBN: 0-8053-4633-3 when it came out was miles better, although even that book had tons of warts. If you are looking for a reference then this book is okay, but by the time I am writing this review you assuredly can find a more modern book.
Part of the problem with books on bioinformatics is that, every book makes very different assumptions on your base level of knowledge of the various critical subjects needed: biology, chemistry, computer science and math. Most strike a pretty poor balance on the assumptions made and vary from way too basic to useless to anyone who is not already familiar with the field. My suggestion is to check out any book you are considering because how good the book is will vary greatly on your background.
more challenging than trying to unravel the human genome........2006-06-08
I used this book to teach a bioinformatics course in a foreign language because it was only one of two available in both english and chinese. I'm not sure it wouldn't have been less confusing to simply use a english textbook and let the students translate the text for themselves. To give the author credit, he has compiled an enormous quantity of information and made it available in a single location and that is no mean feat. At the very least, it is a valuable starting point to find both useful references to better explanations and software appropriate to almost any analysis you might want to do. On the downside, the prose is a tangled mess and is beyond comprehension in places. there are points where, even though i understand the underlying theories used throughout the book, i still couldn't figure out some of the examples used to illustrate particular methods. For example, there are some figures which have captions which run for a page and a half. Finally, in the majority of cases, the figures are taken directly from key papers on each topic, and associated explanations consist of sentences copied verbatim from the text. I may be doing the author a gross injustice here, but in many of the explanations, i was left with the same impression i get when reading students papers when they have copied something out of a textbook, without really understanding what is going on. Having said all of the above, i would still recommend taking a look at this book, but be ready to access the excellent list of references if you want a more insightful understanding of many of the methods described throughout.
Leaves something to be desired.......2006-01-28
I took Dr. Mount's class at the U. or Arizona, and he's a really smart guy, but the man can't explain anything. It's not just his book either; his lectures are just as cryptic. I went to class thinking I understood the concepts, but then I got totally confused when he lectured. I would try to clarify things with the book, and again, I'd get even more confused. Someone who reviewed this book earlier said that he tends to use 10 words where he should use 1; I couldn't agree more. The figures in this book also need a major overhaul, and he should definitely include more examples of the many complex concepts he talks about. While I have no doubt that there is plenty of useful information in there, getting anything out of it is a chore. I would only recommend this book to someone who already had a strong knowledge of bioinformatics concepts.
Bioinformatics: Sequence and Genome Analysis by David W. Mount [Paperback].......2005-09-24
Book is a good reference textbook for Bioinformatics. Of course the material covered is technical and dense, but that is unavoidable for the subject matter that the book covers.
A good book despite criticism.......2005-09-01
I don't understand such a lot of bad comments about this book. In this book concepts are presented in an intelligent way, because the book is as quantitative as the biologist's requirements are. Everithing is sufficient to comprehend which are the things' mathematical basis but avoiding time-comsuming and ready-to-forget extra info. Other books are only for matematicians because they are sometimes full of numbers and complicated equations, while other ones are so simple that I imagine them usefull only for non-biologists (matematicians again above all).
This is a book that is usefull as an introduction for the initial graduate level bioinformatician (biologist) and as a short description of the techniques that we use to matematicians aimed to collaborate.
Finally I am not in agreement with some coments about what is Bioinformatics. Most of them carried out by some non-biologists here. Bioinformatics is Biology. Of course we use mathematics, but as far as we USE them, bioinformatics is not mathematics. We do not develope Mathematics, but Biology state of the art. Bioinspired algorithms, in the other hand, are pure mathematical concepts, even if they are insipred in biology. Let Bioinformatics be what it is, a quantitative and statistical part of pure Biology.
This is a good book if you are not an expert in Bioinformatics but you have in mind to be one. Study this book entirely as your first one and go directly to the difficult ones. For me, it is the shorter reading path to bioinformatics expertise nowadays.
Book Description
Gene regulatory networks are the most complex, extensive control systems found in nature. The interaction between biology and evolution has been the subject of great interest in recent years. The author, Eric Davidson, has been instrumental in elucidating this relationship. He is a world renowned scientist and a major contributor to the field of developmental biology.
The Regulatory Genome beautifully explains the control of animal development in terms of structure/function relations of inherited regulatory DNA sequence, and the emergent properties of the gene regulatory networks composed of these sequences. New insights into the mechanisms of body plan evolution are derived from considerations of the consequences of change in developmental gene regulatory networks. Examples of crucial evidence underscore each major concept. The clear writing style explains regulatory causality without requiring a sophisticated background in descriptive developmental biology. This unique text supersedes anything currently available in the market.
* The only book in the market that is solely devoted to the genomic regulatory code for animal development
* Written at a conceptual level, including many novel synthetic concepts that ultimately simplify understanding
* Presents a comprehensive treatment of molecular control elements that determine the function of genes
* Provides a comparative treatment of development, based on principles rather than description of developmental processes
* Considers the evolutionary processes in terms of the structural properties of gene regulatory networks
* Includes 42 full-color descriptive figures and diagrams
Customer Reviews:
A real theory of biology and evolution.......2007-03-23
This book will be a revelation to any biologist who has not been reading the literature on development and embryology attentively. Davidson eloquently articulates a real theory of the mechanism by which the genome computes the embryologic development of bilaterian animals. The argument is carefully developed from simple principles to more complex implications. The figures are a major part of the book's exposition, and repay very careful reading of the legends along with the associated text. The references are as current as 2006, so the book is quite cutting edge in its outlook. I heartily recommend it to any biologically sophisticated reader. It does presume elementary knowledge about biochemistry and molecular biology at about the freshman/sophomore college level. Enjoy!
Book Description
The unique, central concept of Techniques of Financial Analysis is the “business system,” an effective and intuitive way of visualizing the key areas of the typical business organization, and the related investment, operating, and financing decisions that drive its performance and value. This cash flow model (see Chapter 1) serves as the basic structure to which all analytical concepts and tools are related, so that the student is always aware of the larger operational and strategic context in which these techniques should be applied to properly understand the process of successful value creation in a business. Such contextual insight is critical in a specialized subject like financial analysis, which is generally taught in a dry, accounting-oriented fashion. The presentation has always been kept up to date and is carefully designed to help the reader visualize the linkage between management decisions and financial performance and value. Very importantly, the book demonstrates the modern requirement to distinguish between cash flow (economic) and accounting-based analysis. It helps the reader to interpret financial reports, develop integrated financial projections, understand basic financial modeling, evaluate business investment decisions, develop the implications of financing choices, derive the value of a business or a security, and understand the support role of economic analysis in achieving shareholder value creation. Every technique and measure is described and demonstrated in the context of the underlying key financial and economic concepts, but without delving into theoretical abstraction.
Customer Reviews:
Book is great, software related to the book is not.......2006-12-09
The graphical presentations and practical explanations are very helpful to valuation practitioners. I was so impressed I purchased the related software that is promoted in and modeled after the book. It never functioned correctly, and after a week of trying to reach technical support I finally reached them and they didn't really try to resolve the software's Visual Basic malfunction. Book is great, but ignore it's promotion of the software.
The Professor Says:.......2001-05-18
Having read his sixth edition, I was impressed enough with the 10th edition that I use it for the college class I teach. Unlike most books in this area, Dr. Helfert's book is easy to read and VERY practitioner oriented. I truly believe that if you have an interest in financial analysis, either as an investor or from the perspective of running your own organization, this is the single most valuable resource you could own. If I didn't believe that was true, I'd have my students using a different book.
Book Description
Covering molecular genetics from the basics through to genome expression and molecular phylogenetics, Genomes 3 is the latest edition of this pioneering textbook. Newly updated to incorporate the recent major advances, Genomes 3 is an invaluable companion for any undergraduate throughout their studies in molecular genetics.
Genomes 3 builds on the achievements of the previous editions putting genomes, rather than genes, at the center of molecular genetics teaching. Recognizing that molecular biology research was being driven more by genome sequencing and functional analysis than by research into genes, this approach has gathered momentum in recent years.
The new edition has been significantly restructured and updated to incorporate recent major advances.
Key Features:
BL two NEW chapters on genome anatomies, covering the latest sequencing achievements
BL NEW chapter on genome function, to describe the latest technologies used in studying the transcriptome and the proteome
BL new chapter on recombination, providing expanded coverage of genome evolution
BL major restructuring of chapter order, to align the book more closely to the practical reality of molecular genetics courses
BL newly designed and significantly expanded end-of-chapter exercises, including multiple-choice questions and innovative figure tests
BL newly re-drawn artwork, with the emphasis throughout on simplicity and scientific consistency
BL FREE CD-ROM of the artwork supplied with every copy
One of the outstanding features of the book is the clarity of style and presentation. The artwork has been entirely re-drawn for the third edition, with the emphasis throughout on simplicity and scientific consistency. Genomes 3 provides the reader with a simple and elegant treatment of this fast-moving and rapidly expanding field.
Customer Reviews:
Not for graduate studies.......2007-10-15
I bought this book for a graduate genome class. I will say that it was optional for the class but it is definitely written for the undergraduate level of genetics. If you are taking a graduate class with this book, think about taking something else or prepare to read many others books to fully understand the material. The book is great for a basic understanding. Lots of basic info and easy to read and understand.
Amazon.com
Science writer Matt Ridley has found a way to tell someone else's story without being accused of plagiarism. Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters delves deep within your body (and, to be fair, Ridley's too) looking for dirt dug up by the Human Genome Project. Each chapter pries one gene out of its chromosome and focuses on its role in our development and adult life, but also goes further, exploring the implications of genetic research and our quickly changing social attitudes toward this information. Genome shies away from the "tedious biochemical middle managers" that only a nerd could love and instead goes for the A-material: genes associated with cancer, intelligence, sex (of course), and more.
Readers unfamiliar with the jargon of genetic research needn't fear; Ridley provides a quick, clear guide to the few words and concepts he must use to translate hard science into English. His writing is informal, relaxed, and playful, guiding the reader so effortlessly through our 23 chromosomes that by the end we wish we had more. He believes that the Human Genome Project will be as world-changing as the splitting of the atom; if so, he is helping us prepare for exciting times--the hope of a cure for cancer contrasts starkly with the horrors of newly empowered eugenicists. Anyone interested in the future of the body should get a head start with the clever, engrossing Genome. --Rob Lightner
Book Description
The genome's been mapped.
But what does it mean?
Arguably the most significant scientific discovery of the new century, the mapping of the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genome raises almost as many questions as it answers. Questions that will profoundly impact the way we think about disease, about longevity, and about free will. Questions that will affect the rest of your life.
Genome offers extraordinary insight into the ramifications of this incredible breakthrough. By picking one newly discovered gene from each pair of chromosomes and telling its story, Matt Ridley recounts the history of our species and its ancestors from the dawn of life to the brink of future medicine. From Huntington's disease to cancer, from the applications of gene therapy to the horrors of eugenics, Matt Ridley probes the scientific, philosophical, and moral issues arising as a result of the mapping of the genome. It will help you understand what this scientific milestone means for you, for your children, and for humankind.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent Book.......2007-10-17
This is an excellent book. Matt Ridley mixes his complex opinions on Human civilisation with this great scientfic discovery. Excellent approach and good information.
Understanding what makes us, US.......2007-07-12
This is a great primer for anyone wanting to understand what genes are - and they are not there to cause diseases!!!. The writing style is informative without being weighty and the book is an easy read for the non-scientific.
Compelling.......2007-06-27
I love this book. I only gave it 4 stars because I haven't finished it yet. It's one of those books that you can read over and over and learn new material each time. Matt Ridley's writing style is very easy to follow and he makes the discoveries of science compelling. It's a well organized piece that will most likely intrigue your friends and family as it makes for great conversation. I'm planning on checking out his other published works as well. Great gift too!
review of genome .......2007-05-29
I only read one chapter but i thought it was well written and easy to read despite the complex subject matter.
Genome.......2007-02-07
This is one of the most interesting books I have read in a long time. I am in the field of music and business. This book broke it down so that I could understand most of the major concepts. It is a very good overview of what the Genome Project is and begins to discuss some of the implications that it may have for the future.
Average customer rating:
- Up to Date and Very Well Done
- Poorly Written, Good graphics
- The future may view this text as a foundation for GS
- Excellent overview of Functional and Structural Genomics
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A Primer of Genome Science, 2nd Edition
Greg Gibson
Manufacturer: Sinauer Associates, Inc.
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ASIN: 0878932321 |
Book Description
Genome science as a discipline is less than five years old, but has already spawned a revolution in the way in which genetics is taught in universities, approached by academic researchers, and applied by pharmaceutical and agricultural research companies. While over a dozen new journals devoted to genomics have appeared in the last few years, no introductory textbook that covers the range of disciplines incorporated into genome science has materialized, until now. A Primer of Genome Science bridges the gap between standard genetics textbooks and highly specialized, technical, and advanced treatments of the subdisciplines. It provides an affordable and up-to-date introduction to the field that is suited to advanced undergraduate or early graduate courses. Bioinformatic principles and experimental strategies are explained side-by-side with the experimental methods, establishing a framework that allows teachers to explore topics and the literature at their own pace.
The Primer is organized into six chapters. Each chapter includes: exercises that can be worked by students using the internet and freely available software for analysis of genomic data; discussion questions; a summary; and suggestions for further reading. An Appendix includes a glossary of terms, with a brief review of key genetic concepts.
Customer Reviews:
Up to Date and Very Well Done.......2005-08-11
With the basic science being so new and changing so rapidly, this second edition is timely and welcome. Virtually every chapter has been re-written to bring it up to date. The result is a text suitable for use in upper under grad or beginning grad level course in functional genomics or bioinformatics. The six chapter headings are:
Genome Projects: Organization and Objectives
Genome Sequencing and Annotation
SNPs and Variation
Gene Expression and the Transcriptome
Proteomics and Functional Genomics
Integrative Genomics.
The book is well written and profusely illustrated with color drawings and photographs. The book is closely allied with the web in form of accessable databases and the like which may keep it from going out of date so fast.
With most text books being so expensive, this book is a definite sleeper in the field.
Poorly Written, Good graphics.......2004-01-09
The book is very poorly written and is too difficult to follow to be called a "primer." Authors often focus on actual software tools and how to use them rather than the science behind them.
To be fair, the graphics offered in the book are excellent and sometimes are the only way to understand a difficult concept.
The preface says to be familiar with "the content of a typical 300 level undergraduate course in genetics" -- it should be a definite prerequisite for reading this book.
The future may view this text as a foundation for GS.......2003-05-15
Every technician and/or PI should own a copy of this text for their lab. With the logical diagrams and full explanation of the text, this book is really condensed and assumes some knowledge of molecular biology. This book does not assume knowledge of genomics, but rather serves as a manual.
Excellent overview of Functional and Structural Genomics.......2002-03-20
This somewhat understated book may be overlooked based on its title, and yet it represents the best book currently in print to provide a solid overview of the science and issues in genome science, functional and structural genomics, and the subdiscipline proteomics. Chapter 1 describes current progress with mapping genomes, including the human genome and other genomes in plants and animals. Chapter 2 describes sequencing approaches and gene identification. Chapter 3 deals with gene expression and technologies. Chapter 4 focuses on proteomics including brief introductions to 2D-PAGE and mass spectrometry. This chapter also briefly introduces the reader to structural genomics, or the prediction of protein structure based on sequence through threading and modeling. After a chapter on single nucletide polymorphisms and genotyping the book concludes with a chapter on integrating genome studies including the use of in silico approaches.
Although scant in detail in parts, a major strength of the book is the wide coverage given to science of genomics and its offshoots. Overall an excellent course text for undergraduate or early postgraduate students or others interested in these emerging disciplines. I am not aware of any competing texts which such coverage and certainly not at the price of this one.
Book Description
Biology is in the midst of a era yielding many significant discoveries and promising many more. Unique to this era is the exponential growth in the size of information-packed databases. Inspired by a pressing need to analyze that data, Introduction to Computational Biology explores a new area of expertise that emerged from this fertile field- the combination of biological and information sciences. This introduction describes the mathematical structure of biological data, especially from sequences and chromosomes. After a brief survey of molecular biology, it studies restriction maps of DNA, rough landmark maps of the underlying sequences, and clones and clone maps. It examines problems associated with reading DNA sequences and comparing sequences to finding common patterns. The author then considers that statistics of pattern counts in sequences, RNA secondary structure, and the inference of evolutionary history of related sequences. Introduction to Computational Biology exposes the reader to the fascinating structure of biological data and explains how to treat related combinatorial and statistical problems. Written to describe mathematical formulation and development, this book helps set the stage for even more, truly interdisciplinary work in biology.
Customer Reviews:
A modern classic.......2003-10-15
The first name people learn in bioinformatics is the Smith-Waterman algorithm. Some people never learn anything else. This is by that Waterman. Although written in 1995, it still has some of the best discussion I've seen on the topics it addresses.
The first few chapters deal with the "digest problem," reconstructing a DNA or protein sequence from the fragment sizes of enzyme digests. The technique is not used as much now as it was then, but it's always good to know the background of modern techniques.
The digest problem doesn't stand alone, though. It introduces concepts - islands, anchors, etc. - that still matter. The problems in reconstructing molecules from digests yield the same kinds of intermediate results and the same ambiguities that arise in modern sequencing. As Waterman advances the discussion, shotgun sequencing appears as a logical extension, at least mathematically, of digest assembly.
Sequence assembly involve end matching, perhaps in the presence of sequencing errors. That introduces the topic for which Waterman's name is famous, approximate string matching. The next few chapter progress through dynamic programming and multiple alignments. The logical connections between the techniques shown are so tight that chapter boundaries are almost artificial. It was a real pleasure to see the computational and practical relationships laid out.
The final topics, RNA structure and phylogenetic trees, lack the continuity that characterized the first dozen chapters. The RNA structure may be the weakest chapter in the book, but still a very competent introduction.
Throughout, Waterman emphasizes mathematical rigor without insisting on uninformative theorems. Every topic is presented in rich detail, with special attention to scoring and background models. Perhaps there are newer discussions of some topics. I don't know of any clearer discussions, though. Best, I think, is how Waterman prepares the reader to ask all the right questions in any future discussion: what are the elements of the computation, how can elements be recombined, how good is a result, and how does the result stand out from the statistical background.
The final chapter is what a bibliography should be. It doesn't just list authors, titles, and dates of publication. It actually discusses the contribution that each source made to this book. Rather than leave the reader to wander aimlessly among obscure titles, Waterman shows which sources are most informative on which topics. I wish more authors took the time for such commentary.
This is a book worth having. It covers topics that I haven't seen elsewhere, and shows how many different topics relate to each other. It is rigorous without giving distracting detail. Most of all, it keeps the biology in sight of all calculations. Some authors seem to forget that anything exists but the arithmetic; Waterman puts the math clearly in the service of its subject. I enjoyed it immensely, and look forward to applying its content in my own research.
Packed full of good information.......2000-08-13
This book gives a good survey of the different techniques employed by computational biologists. After a brief review of molecular biology in Chapter 1, the author treats the mathematical modeling of restriction maps in Chapter 2 using graph theory. His presentation is somewhat hurried, but he does give references and gives the reader three exercises at the end of the chapter. Multiple maps are treated in Chapter 3, wherein the author first makes use of probability theory, via the Kingman subadditive ergodic theorem. The proof is omitted but the author does a good job of explaining its use in studying the double digest problem (DDP). The best part of this chapter is the author's explanation of the difficulties of using Kingman's results for solving the DDP, and goes on to discuss multiple solutions of the DDP. Graph theory is again used in the discussion. This sets up the discussion in Chapter 4, which outlines algorithms for the DDP. The author gives a very compact introduction to P- and NP-complete problems in the theory of computation, then proves that DDP is NP-complete. The author does a good job of discussing subsequent approximate methods used for the DDP, such as simulated annealing. Markov chains are introduced in the book here for the first time, but due to the shortness of the presentation, the reader should do outside reading as a back-up. The author does a great job of explaining the difficulties if measurement error is introduced in the DDP at the end of the chapter. Cloning is discussed in Chapter 5, with tools from probability theory used to deal with partial digest libraries. The chapter is really short though, and the working the problems at the end of the chapter is essential for the understanding the results of this chapter. The author switches gears in the next chapter, wherein physical maps are discussed. The discussion is fairly detailed and interesting. Sequencing is discussed in the next two chapters, and the treatment is very good. Hashing is introduced here, and psedocode is given throughout. The very important method of dynamic programming is outlined in Chapter 9, which is beautifully written, and again pseudocode abounds throughout. Genetic mapping is left out though, but the this, the longest chapter of the book, is a detailed introduction to this area. The results in this chapter are used to study multiple sequence alignment in Chapter 10, wherein hidden Markov models are introduced for the first time. The discussion of these models is very curt, but there are other books and notes available if the reader needs further guidance. The best chapter of the book follows, which discusses probability and statistics for sequence alignment. The theory of large deviations is brought in, and the author does an excellent job of discussing this important, and powerful theory. The reader's level of mathematical sophistication is assumed to be a lot greater than the rest of the book in this chapter. Knowledge of measure theory and martingales are assumed here. The author uses the very powerful tool of relative entropy, so indispensable in other applications of probability. The problem set at the end of the chapter is challenging but working them through is definitely worth the time involved. The next chapter also uses some heavy guns from probability theory to study sequence patterns. The author returns to matter of a more empirical nature in Chapter 13, which deals with RNA secondary structures. The reader with a background in simple combinatorial theory should find the reading straightforward and informative. Continuous-time Markov chains are introduced in the next chapter to study trees and sequences. The treatment here is rather hurried, so again the reader should work the exercises at the end of the chapter. The book ends with a discussion of the literature and references. All in all a very nice book, worth the price, and worth spending time reading. The only minus might be the total omission of actual source code, but that really was not the intent of the book. Readers with a strong mathematical background will like the book, as well as anyone interested in going into the area of computational biology.
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