Bioinformatics: Sequence and Genome Analysis

When the draft of the human genetic sequence was published in 2001, articles in the popular press excitedly proclaimed discovery of the 'Book of Life'.The authors of one of the academic articles announcing this feat were more sober, writing 'in principle, the string of genetic bits holds long-sought secrets of human development, physiology, and medicine.In practice, our ability to transform such information into understanding remains woefully inadequate' [Nature, Vol.409 (2001), pp.860-921].Transforming data into understanding is the primary goal of informatics, indeed of all science; informatics is motivated by the modern requirement that we 'drink from the firehose'.The automated sequencing machines, the immensity of a genome, the abundance of species call for new methods of statistical inference as we seek to read that Book.The drive to bring this information to our students, to young scientists early in their careers, has inspired Professor Isaev to write this book, which surveys mathematical methods currently used to understand the working of the genome.This book consists of 9 chapters, divided into two parts.Chapters 1-5 are devoted to sequence analysis (alignment, Markov chains and hidden Markov models, protein folding and phylogenetic