Sequence — Evolution — Function : Computational Approaches in Comparative Genomics

Designed as an introduction to the field of computational methods for comparative and functional genomics, this text explains the computer methods from the user's viewpoint, without the details of the math and algorithms. The history of the field, various genome sequencing projects, the conceptual basis of the field, evolutionary principles of protein function assignments, and databases of genomic data are the book's main topics. Both authors are affiliated with the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

Sequence - Evolution - Function is an introduction to the computational approaches that play a critical role in the emerging new branch of biology known as functional genomics. The book provides the reader with an understanding of the principles and approaches of functional genomics and of the potential and limitations of computational and experimental approaches to genome analysis.

Sequence - Evolution - Function should help bridge the "digital divide" between biologists and computer scientists, allowing biologists to better grasp the peculiarities of the emerging field of Genome Biology and to learn how to benefit from the enormous amount of sequence data available in the public databases. The book is non-technical with respect to the computer methods for genome analysis and discusses these methods from the user's viewpoint, without addressing mathematical and algorithmic details. Prior practical familiarity with the basic methods for sequence analysis is a major advantage, but a reader without such experience will be able to use the book as an introduction to these methods. This book is perfect for introductory level courses in computational methods for comparative and functional genomics.

In the early spring of 1980, one of the authors of this book (EVK) was an excited listener to a seminar presented in Moscow State University, the authors' alma mater, by a well-known virologist, a scientist of rare creativity, and later a good friend, Anatoly Altstein. This is an introduction to the computational approaches that play a critical role in the emerging branch of biology known as functional genomics. The book provides the reader with an understanding of the principles and approaches to the subject