
Chapter 1
Introduction
If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; bu t if we begin with
doubts, and are patient in them, we shall end in certainties.
—Francis Bacon
1.1 Bioinformatics – an emerging discipline
Life sciences a re currently at the center of an informational revolution. Dr a-
matic changes are being registered as a consequence of the development o f
techniques and tools that allow the collectio n of biological information at an
unprecedented level of detail and in extremely large quantities. The human
genome project is a compelling example. Initially, the plan to sequence the hu-
man genome was considered extremely ambitious,