Algorithms in Computational Molecular Biology: Techniques, Approaches and Applications

PREFACE

Computational molecular biology has emerged from the Human Genome Project as an important discipline for academic research and industrial application. The exponential growth of the size of biological databases, the complexity of biological problems, and the necessity to deal with errors in biological sequences require the development of fast, low-memory requirement and high-performance algorithms. This book is a forum of such algorithms, based on new/improved approaches and/or techniques. Most of the current books on algorithms in computational molecular biology either lack technical depth or focus on specific narrow topics. This book is the first overview on algorithms in computational molecular biology with both a wide coverage of this field and enough depth to be of practical use to working professionals. It surveys the most recent developments, offering enough fundamental and technical information on these algorithms and the related problems without overloading the reader. So, this book endeavors to strike a balance between theoretical and practical coverage of a wide range of issues in computational molecular biology. Of course, the list of topics that is explored in this book is not exhaustive, but it is hoped that the topics covered will get the reader to think of the implications of the presented algorithms on the developments in his/her own field. The material included in this book was carefully chosen for quality and relevance. This book also presents a mixture ...