Historically, programming hasn't been considered a critical skill for biologists. But now, with access to vast amounts of biological data contained in public databases, programming skills are increasingly in strong demand in biology research and development. Perl, with its highly developed capacities in string handling, text processing, networking, and rapid prototyping, has emerged as the programming language of choice for biological data analysis.
Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics covers the core Perl language and many of its module extensions, presenting them in the context of biological data and problems of pressing interest to the biological community. This book, along with Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics , forms a basic course in Perl programming. This second volume finishes the basic Perl tutorial material (references, complex data structures, object-oriented programming, use of modules--all presented in a biological context) and presents some advanced topics of considerable interest in bioinformatics.
The range of topics covered in Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics prepares the reader for enduring and emerging developments in critical areas of bioinformatics programming such as:
Gene finding
String alignment
Methods of data storage and retrieval (SML and databases)
Modeling of networks (graphs and Petri nets)
Graphics (Tk)
Parallelization
Interfacing with other programming languages
Statistics (PDL)
Protein structure determination
Biological models of computation (DNA Computers)
Biologists and computer scientists who have conquered the basics of Perl and are ready to move even further in their mastery of this versatile language will appreciate the author's well-balanced approach to applying Perl's analytical abilities to the field of bioinformatics. Full of practical examples and real-world biological problem solving, this book is a must for any reader wanting to move beyond beginner level Perl in bioinformatics.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
|
| James Tisdall | James Tisdall has worked as a musician, as a programmer and member of technical staff at Bell Labs (where he programmed for speech research and discovered a formal language for musical rhythm), as a programmer and systems manager at the Human Genome Project in the Computational Biology and Informatics Laboratory (where he began using Perl for bioinformatics in 1991 with his program DNA WorkBench), as computational biologist at Mercator Genetics in Menlo Park, California (where his Perl programs helped discover the gene involved in the common hereditary disease hemochromatosis), as manager of Bioinformatics at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, and most recently as a consultant for Biocomputing Associates of Kimberton, Pennsylvania, and the Burke Research Institute affiliated with Cornell University, working on neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. |
