July 2003
Intermediate to advanced
368 pages
13h 44m
English
Content preview from BLAST
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96
Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
A BLAST Statistics Tutorial
BLAST statistics are everywhere in biology today. In fact, it’s hard to find a molecu-
lar-biology paper, grant proposal, patent application, or biotech business plan that
doesn’t refer to the Expect or P-value of a BLAST result. The BLAST Expect has so
permeated biological thinking in recent years that for many scientists it has become
synonymous with biological truth. Tell a colleague that you’ve just cloned a gene
that’s homologous to something trendy, and odds are that he will ask what the
Expect of its alignment was in a BLAST search.
Of course, what some see as a sweeping change, others label a fad. While some
researchers consider BLAST statistics a welcome injection of mathematical rigor into
the biological world, others lament the abandonment of biological insight for faith in
a number. No matter where you stand on this issue, there is no avoiding the reality
of BLAST statistics in today’s bioinformatics workplace. Understanding what the
numbers in a BLAST report mean and how they are derived isn’t just for mathemati-
cians; it’s a real-world survival skill for biologists and bioinformatics professionals in
academia and industry alike.
The material covered in this chapter is practical rather than theoretical in nature.
Chapter
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.