Deciphering the Book of Life

Accelerated by the Human Genome Project, the accumulation of genetic data (DNA sequences) has reached unprecedented speeds. Mining such massive data and turning raw information into real knowledge will become the major scientific activity of the next century. To understand the structure and function of a genome (which is the program codebook of a life organism), computational biologists are working closely with experimental bench-scientists in the development and application of new tools for cracking the enigma.

Starting with a brief historical and biological background, this book takes the reader on a fascinating journey through several major areas of computational genomics -- the analytical component (as opposed to the database component) of bioinformatics. In each area, the book first introduces the biotechnology related to the data, and this is followed by the formulation of the biological problems; several computational approaches are then described, with open problems given at the end. The author, a theoretical physicist-turned-computational biologist, emphasizes basic ideas and intuitive principles behind the various computational methodologies. Thus, this book not only serves as an overview for students and non-specialists who are interested in bioinformatics and genome research, but also offers some novel views and non-conventional treatments to more advanced readers and professional experts.