T. Lengauer – Bioinformatics From Genomes to Therapies (2007)

Автор: T. Lengauer
Название книги: Bioinformatics From Genomes to Therapies
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Биоинформатика
Страницы: 1781
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

Once again, Thomas Lengauer has succeeded in creating a comprehensive and immensely useful bioinformatics resource that meets even the high standards of professionals in the pharmaceutical and medical sector.
By extending the classical application areas of bioinformatics to the most recent approaches in analyzing molecular networks and in predicting molecular function, this handbook serves as a first-stop resource for every bioinformatics user in the life sciences. With contributions by more than 40 of the world’s leading bioinformaticians, it is unrivalled in terms of scientific authority and accuracy.
The best single information source available, written by professionals for professionals

This book is a substantially expanded sequel to the book Bioinformatics –
From Genomes to Drugs that appeared in 2002. Since the publication of the
predecessor book the field of bioinformatics has experienced continuing and
substantially accelerated growth in terms of the volume and diversity of availablemolecular
data, as well as the development ofmethods for analyzing and
interpreting these data. This book is a reflection of the dynamic maturation
of the field. Like its predecessor, it discusses bioinformatics in the context
of pharmaceutical and medical challenges pertaining to the understanding,
diagnosis and therapy of diseases. The previous book covered bioinformatics
issues accompanying the stages from the collection of genomic data across
the elucidation of the molecular basis of disease and the identification of
target proteins for drug design to the search for leads for potential drugs.
This book extends this schema in various ways. First, the process line from
genome to drug is extended downstream towards the optimization of drug
leads and further towards the personalization of drug therapies, which is also
beginning to be supported with bioinformatics methods. Second, the book
covers the field in substantially more breadth. The different types of available
data are discussedmore comprehensively and inmore detail. On the sequence
side, two chapters on RNA have been added. The bioinformatics analysis of
evolutionary relationships is addressed in several chapters. The discussion of
protein structure has been significantly expanded. There are new sections on
molecular networks, mRNA expression data and protein function, covering
several chapters each. The disease-specific part of the book has also been
expanded, including discussions of bacterial and viral infections. Finally,
several chapters on informatics technologies employed for bioinformatics are
included.
Bioinformatics is continuing to present one of the grand challenges of our
times. It has a large basic research aspect, since we cannot claim to be close to
understanding biological systems on an organism or even cellular level. At the
same time, the field is faced with a strong demand for immediate solutions,
because the genomic and postgenomic data that are being collected harbor many biological insights whose deciphering can be the basis for dramatic
scientific and economical success, and is promising to have large impact on
society.
The book is directed at readers who are interested in how bioinformatics can
spur biological and medical innovation towards understanding, diagnosing
and curing diseases. The book is designed to be useful to readers with a variety
of backgrounds. Biologists, biochemists, pharmacologists, pharmacists
and medical doctors can get an introduction into basic and practical issues
of the computer-based part of handling and interpreting genomic, postgenomic
and clinical data. In particular, many chapters point to bioinformatics
software and data resources which are available on the Internet (often at no
cost), and make an attempt at classifying and comparing those resources. For
computer scientists and mathematicians, the book contains an introduction
to the biological background and the necessary information in order to begin
appreciating the difficulties and wonders of modeling complex biochemical
and biomolecular issues by computer. Since the book caters to a readership
with widely varying backgrounds, it also contains chapters with a diverse
makeup. There are chapters that put the biology in the foreground and only
sketch methodical issues, and a smaller number of chapters in which the
algorithmic and statistical content dominates. By and large, the way in which
the chapters are written reflects the viewpoint from which the authors, and
that also often means the world-wide research community, approaches the
respective topic.
The book contains a name and a subject index. A methodical index is
integrated inside the subject index and points to those sections that present
the master introductions to the quoted computational methods.
The world’s leading experts have contributed their expertise and written
largely autonomous chapters on the specific topics of this book. In order to
render added coherence to the book, the chapters contain a large number of
cross-references to aid in relating the topics of different chapters to each other.
In a few cases, overlap between the chapters has been allowed to ensure the
independent readability of the chapters.
I am grateful to the many people who helped make this book possible.
Above all, I thank the 91 authors of contributed chapters who have shown
extraordinary commitment during the draft and revision stages of their text.
Ruth Christmann spent many hours helping me to master the logistic feat of
collecting the texts, encouraging authors to keep to their commitments, handling
versions and completing revisions with a special focus on reference lists.
Joachim Büch kept the website for book authors alive and well maintained
during the preparation and production process. Ray Loughlin did a superb
job on copy-editing the book. Frank Weinreich and later Steffen Pauly were
always responsive partners on the side of the publisher. Finally, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my wife Sybille and my children Sara and
Nico who had to cope with my physical or mental absence too much while
the project was ongoing. They gave the most for receiving the least.