Genomics and Bioinformatics

Tore Samuelsson is a Professor in Biochemistry and Bioinformatics at the Institute of Biomedicine, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He has been active in bioinformatics research for more than fifteen years and has over ten years' experience of teaching in the field, including the development of web resources for molecular biology and bioinformatics education.

'The book provides a lively and accessible introduction to current research in the life sciences, and it does so in a succinct way by grounding the explanations with simple algorithms expressed in Perl code. As such, the book can be very useful to a general science audience, particularly those with a computer science background, whether established researchers or undergraduate students. The writing is inspiring and engaging, and the inclusion of Perl code makes it easy for readers to apply the knowledge and observe the outcomes.' Sara Kalvala, Computing Reviews

• Preface; Acknowledgements; Design and conventions of this book; 1. Introduction - working with the molecules of life in the computer; 2. Gene technology - cutting DNA; 3. Gene technology - knocking genes down; 4. Gene technology - amplifying DNA; 5. Human disease - when DNA sequences are toxic; 6. Human disease - iron imbalance and the iron responsive element; 7. Human disease - cancer as a result of aberrant proteins; 8. Evolution - what makes us human?; 9. Evolution - resolving a criminal case; 10. Evolution - the sad case of the Tasmanian tiger; 11. A function to every gene - termites, metagenomics and learning about the function of a sequence; 12. A function to every gene - royal blood and order in the sequence universe; 13. A function to every gene - a slimy molecule; 14. Information resources - learning about flu viruses; 15. Finding genes - going ashore at CpG islands; 16. Finding genes - in the world of snurps; 17. Finding genes - hunting for the distant RNA relatives; 18. Personal genomes - the differences between you and me; 19. Personal genomes - what's in my genome?; 20. Personal genomes - details of family genetics; Appendix I. Brief Unix reference; Appendix II. A selection of biological sequence analysis software; Appendix III. Short Perl reference; Appendix IV. Brief introduction to R; Index.