This book is used as text for the in-class version of the "Introduction to Bioinformatics" class

---

Product Description

Were you always curious about biology but were afraid to sit through long hours of dense reading? Did you like the subject when you were in high school but had other plans after you graduated? Now you can explore the human genome and analyze DNA without ever leaving your desktop!

Bioinformatics For Dummies is packed with valuable information that introduces you to this exciting new discipline. This easy-to-follow guide leads you step by step through every bioinformatics task that can be done over the Internet. Forget long equations, computer-geek gibberish, and installing bulky programs that slow down your computer. You’ll be amazed at all the things you can accomplish just by logging on and following these trusty directions. You get the tools you need to:

• Analyze all types of sequences
• Use all types of databases
• Work with DNA and protein sequences
• Conduct similarity searches
• Build a multiple sequence alignment
• Edit and publish alignments
• Visualize protein 3-D structures
• Construct phylogenetic trees

This up-to-date second edition includes newly created and popular databases and Internet programs as well as multiple new genomes. It provides tips for using servers and places to seek resources to find out about what’s going on in the bioinformatics world. Bioinformatics For Dummies will show you how to get the most out of your PC and the right Web tools so you’ll be searching databases and analyzing sequences like a pro!

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #106352 in Books
• Published on: 2006-12-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 456 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780470089859
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
“…buy soon and read fast!…” (Spixiana, July 2004)

"...will be of enormous practical assistance to anyone getting to grips with bioinformatics tools in the course of their research..." (Briefings in Bioinformatics, June 2003)

From the Back Cover
Search databases and analyze sequences like a pro

Get the most out of your PC and the Web with the right tools

Explore the human genome and analyze DNA — without leaving your desktop! All it takes is the basics of molecular biology and the wealth of information in this friendly guide. You'll discover the online tools and useful tips you need to ask the right questions, analyze sequences, and compare results. It's a plain-English introduction to the field!

Discover how to

• Do biological research online
• Use gene-centric databases
• Visualize proteins in 3-D
• Interpret and analyze sequences
• Produce and publish results

About the Author
Jean-Michel Claverie is Professor of Medical Bioinformatics at the School of Medicine of the Université de la Méditerranée, and a consultant in genomics and bioinformatics. He is the founder and current head of the Structural & Genomic Information Laboratory, located in Marseilles, a sunny city on the Mediterranean coast of France. Using science as a pretext to travel, Jean-Michel has held positions in Paris (France), Sherbrooke (PQ, Canada), the Salk Institute (La Jolla, CA), the Pasteur Institute (Paris), Incyte pharmaceutical (Palo Alto, CA); and the National Center for Biotechnology Information (Bethesda, MD). He has used computers in biology since the early days –– his Ph.D. work involved modeling biochemical reactions by programming an 8K Honeywell 516 computer right from the console switches! Although he has no clear recollection of it, he has been credited with introducing the French word “bioinformatique” in the late eighties, before involuntarily coining the catchy “bioinformatics” by mistranslating it while giving a talk in English!
Jean-Michel’s current research interests are in microbial and structural genomics, and in the development of bioinformatic methods for the prediction of gene function. He is the author or coauthor of more than 150 scientific publications, and a member of numerous international review panels and scientific councils. In his spare time, he enjoys the relaxed pace of life in Marseilles, with his wife Chantal and their two sons, Nicholas and Raphael.

Cedric Notredame is a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. Cedric has used and abused the facilities offered by science to wander around Europe. After a Ph.D. at EMBL (Heidelberg, Germany) and at the European Bioinformatics Institute (Cambridge, UK) under the supervision of Des Higgins (yes, the ClustalW guy), Cedric did a post-doc at the National Institute of Medical Research (London, UK), in the lab of Willie Taylor and under the supervision of Jaap Heringa. He then did a post-doc in Lausanne (Switzerland) with Phillip Bucher, and remained involved with the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics for several years. Having had his share of rain, snow, and wind, Cedric has finally settled in Marseilles, where the sun and the sea are simply warmer than any other place he has lived in.
Cedric dedicates most of his research to the multiple sequence alignment problem and its many applications in biology. His friends claim that his entire life (past, present, future) is somehow stuffed into the T-Coffee multiple-sequence alignment package. When he is not busy dismantling T-Coffee and brewing new sequences, Cedric enjoys life in the company of his wife, Marita.

---

Customer Reviews

A great resource for teachers too!
I have used databases before (mostly NCBI, TIGR and SWISS PROT) and yet, this book (presumably for dummies) has shown me so much more(which say a lot about me)! It is accurate and gives good step by step guide to how to perform many tasks - from how to find a gene to using the analysis tools and to exploring some of the newer features of these databases - and the areas like you have never looked into before.
It is a well-researched book and the authors are clearly knowledgeable in this area.

Even though I have been for a 4-day bioinformatics course (6 months ago), which I thought was pretty good, this book still had so much to offer. Using this book, I was easily able to substitute the proteins of my interest into their examples and generated meaningful hits.

The book also covers deeper and more advanced features of BLAST, discusses sequence alignments using several types of algorithm and even has a section on 3D structures. Towards the end of book - it features a section on working with mRNA and building phylogenetics trees - which again are excellent resources for teachers involved in teaching beginners molecular biology.

I am a teacher teaching at a Pre-unversity level. The way the book is structured also lends its material to be modified into lesson materials for training students.

It is really a great book! Worth every dollar I spent on it!

disappointing from the viewpoint of a computer scientist...
I hold a masters degree in computer sciences (so in fact I am a biology dummy), but always had a strong interest for sciences. So I want to delve deeply into this fascinating area, but first wanted to read a book to quickly introduce me the basic concepts. With this background, I must say the book is a little bit disappointing. You can clearly see that this book is written with the biologist in mind, definitely not the computer scientist.
The biological concepts are not explained very well for a biology dummy, let me explain you why :
1. Some basic biological concepts are not explained. I wanted to have some more explanation on the basic concepts of how molecular and cell biology works. A lot of times, the autors tell you how to use some tool, but is not always clearly explained to me why, for what purpose they use the tool. For instance they explain how to find a list of related protein sequences, but for me it is not clear why biologists need to have such a list. And this is only one example, I could give much more simular examples...
2. Remember guys, I am a dummy, so please explain me the difference between a gene and a genome before using these terms. And also, I heard about chromosomes, but why do you not explain what is it exactly ?. Also, there are a lot of explanations on how to work with RNA, but please explain me more about the functional difference between RNA and DNA.
3. The explanations on how to use serveral internet tools are too wordy, they spent several pages explaining things that are so intuitively clear like "click this or that button", "use menu file, edit, copy to past your stuff to the computer clipboard"....
4. A lot of complex terms are or not explained the first time they use it ("phylogenic"). Sometimes these terms are explained further in the book, but from a didactical standpoint, you should at least give an informal definition when you first use some concepts...

Conclusion: I currently read the first hundred pages of the book and maybe I will change this review later on. But I can already tell : the first chapters might be well suited for a computer dummy, but definitely not for a biology dummy. However with some help of the internet(for instance there is an excellent explanation on how cells work at the howstuffworks website http://science.howstuffworks.com/cell.htm), I will continue to read the book further. Maybe after that I will need to change my preview...

Bioinformatics for Dummies by J.M. Claverie & C. Notredame
"Bioinformatics for Dummies" is an excellent resource. It is clear, easy to read, well organized and illustrated. I was particularly pleased by the colloquial tone of the writing: in addition to being informative, it was fun to read!

As a scientist who spends at least half of my time BLASTing, I also read it for accuracy and found it to almost error-free (any errors were in the figures). Additionally, most of the web pages were up-to-date, although as time passes the links will decay and web pages will change their look. In addition, the book contained enough in-depth content to teach me several new tricks of the trade.

Further, I believe the book had sufficient background material to educate the novice. To test this, I gave the manual to a material science chemist and he was able to understand the material, at least until he decided it was more than he wanted to know and quit reading.

This is a useful text for those who want to know more than an operational definition of bioinformatics and a must for the library of all bioinformatics users.