Thoroughly updated and considerably expanded, this third edition now includes material on the growing array of “-omics”; covering metagenomics, toxicogenomics, glycomics, lipidomics, microbiomics, and phenomics. New chapters have also been added on ecosystems management and the nervous system. Emphasis is placed on providing both a firm grounding in the core concepts, and a clear overview of the complete field of bioinformatics.
Topics and features: explains the fundamentals of information science relevant to biology, discussing set theory, combinatorics, probability, likelihood, clustering, pattern recognition, randomness, complexity, systems, and networks; covers both organismal (ontogeny and phylogeny, as well as genome structure) and molecular aspects; critically examines the most important practical applications of bioinformatics, providing detailed descriptions of both the experimental process and the analysis of the data; provides a varied selection of problems throughout the book, to stimulate further thinking; contains an extensive bibliography offering a guide to further reading and to the latest reported research.
Combining the successful formula of the previous editions with significantly enhanced new content, this textbook serves as a complete study companion for undergraduates and the beginning graduate student. With its invaluable insights into the state-of-the-art of bioinformatics, the book is also ideal for physical scientists seeking a succinct guide to biology, and for biological scientists wishing to better understand the physicochemical and mathematical aspects underpinning the applications.