Bioinformatics Books for the Technically Inclined? 27
bookEnders asks: "I hold a BS and MS in Biology. For the past 6 years, I have worked as a computer programmer not in field of Biology. I have an upcoming interview (several weeks from now) for a Bioinformatics programmer position. It appears to be a great job for me - a marriage of University training and professional experience. As LISP is a requirement, I have been burrowing through David Lamkins's Successful LISP tutorial. However, I am having trouble finding Bioinformatics books that are geared toward my skills: most are written for Biologists who don't know Linux or PERL. Others are written for Computer Scientists who don't know squat about Biology. I know enough about both that neither set of these books is too valuable. Can someone (hopefully those in the field) suggest reference or tutorial materials to help me prepare for this interview?"
Seems like your perfect. (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Seems like your perfect. (Score:1)
Talking out my ass? Yea sure.
Troll???!
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2)
I think Bioinformatics is still too new of a field for there to be many books out there. O'Reilly has two books, but one is aimed at absolute newbies that are looking for the ON button, while the others is for people that have found the ON button and are trying to start out with Perl.
I'd also be interested in finding something a bit more advanced, but as of yet it doesn't seem to exist, and it seems like a perfect opportunity for someone to step in and write one. I'm an intermediate Perl monkey and I remember a bit of my last biology class back in high school, but that doesn't put me in a strong enough position to be trying to teach anything to anyone else yet. This doesn't sound like a problem for the original poster. Maybe he could spend the time waiting for this job by writing the first Lisp for Biologists book? I know I'd be interested in it...
What field is the job in? (Score:3, Informative)
What area of biology does the job involve? With that, people could give you more specific pointers. Failing that, I'd suggest going to some web sites -- NCBI, ensembl.org, genome.ucsc.edu -- and looking at what's around. (Of course, my list is biased towards sequence-based genomics. If the job you're eyeing is in proteomics or arrays or some other functional genomics, it won't help as much which is why it would be useful to have a more specific pointer.)
Bioinformatics Links (Score:2, Insightful)
Bioinformatics Books (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~stelo/pattern.html#Resource s
under "Books". I agree that the there is no book that cover 100% of Bioinformatics, but a a subset of these will definitely do.
I particularly like the book by Gusfield for the algorithms.
Regarding Perl, you are probably aware of a new book by O'Reilly about "Perl for Bioinformatics"
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/begperlbio/
Regards,
Stefano
have you checked the stuff by o'reilly? (Score:1)
Re:have you checked the stuff by o'reilly? (Score:2)
Biological Sequence Analysis (Score:3, Insightful)
O'Reilly (Score:1)
I agree with the other poster who said you're probably perfect for the job as it is. Sounds like you've got good qualifications and in my opinion anybody who get any degree in biology can learn anything they put their mind to.
Textbooks I've used (Score:2, Informative)
Don't worry (Score:1)
I got into the biz three years ago (as a biologist) and I'm still learning new languages.
Mostly C and XML transformation stuff, cause I honestly believe Perl & Lisp are not up to the massive amount of data challenge.
Bioinformatics Books (Score:1, Informative)
Do a search at www.mightywords.com (Score:1, Informative)
Data Analysis for Bioinformatics : Part 1: Probability, Statistics, Information Theory, Clusters
by Arun Jagota $10.00 Publisher: Arun Jagota Pub Date: 05/09/00
Data Classification for Bioinformatics : Supervised Methods
by Arun Jagota $10.00 Publisher: Arun Jagota Pub Date: 07/14/00
Perl for Bioinformatics
by Arun Jagota $9.95 Publisher: MightyWords Inc. Pub Date: 03/15/01
AAaiieeeee (Score:1)
1.)An O'Reilly book deal. I know a *lot* of programming and UNIX system adminstration. A lot more than the crack users who they got to write these dreadful bioinformatics books.
2.)A lot of money. Especially in a position where I get to boss around straight-up bio geeks. My first order of business will be banning the reading of slashdot at work.
Re:AAaiieeeee (Score:1)