Computing For Biologists

Computing is revolutionizing the practice of biology. This book, which assumes no prior computing experience, provides students with the tools to write their own Python programs and to understand fundamental concepts in computational biology and bioinformatics. Each major part of the book begins with a compelling biological question, followed by the algorithmic ideas and programming tools necessary to explore it: the origins of pathogenicity are examined using gene finding, the evolutionary history of sex determination systems is studied using sequence alignment, and the origin of modern humans is addressed using phylogenetic methods. In addition to providing general programming skills, this book explores the design of efficient algorithms, simulation, NP-hardness, and the maximum likelihood method, among other key concepts and methods. Easy-to-read and designed to equip students with the skills to write programs for solving a range of biological problems, the book is accompanied by numerous programming exercises, available at www.cs.hmc.edu/CFB.

A concise introduction to key computing skills for biologists While biological data continues to grow exponentially in size and quality, many of today’s biologists are not trained adequately in the computing skills necessary for leveraging this information deluge. In Computing Skills for Biologists, Stefano Allesina and Madlen Wilmes present a valuable toolbox for the effective analysis of biological data. Based on the authors’ experiences teaching scientific computing at the University of Chicago, this textbook emphasizes the automation of repetitive tasks and the construction of pipelines for data organization, analysis, visualization, and publication. Stressing practice rather than theory, the book’s examples and exercises are drawn from actual biological data and solve cogent problems spanning the entire breadth of biological disciplines, including ecology, genetics, microbiology, and molecular biology. Beginners will benefit from the many examples explained step-by-step, while more seasoned researchers will learn how to combine tools to make biological data analysis robust and reproducible. The book uses free software and code that can be run on any platform. Computing Skills for Biologists is ideal for scientists wanting to improve their technical skills and instructors looking to teach the main computing tools essential for biology research in the twenty-first century. Excellent resource for acquiring comprehensive computing skills Both novice and experienced scientists will increase efficiency by building automated and reproducible pipelines for biological data analysis Code examples based on published data spanning the breadth of biological disciplines Detailed solutions provided for exercises in each chapter Extensive companion website

Practical Computing for Biologists shows you how to use many freely available computing tools to work more powerfully and effectively. The book was born out of the authors' own experience in developing tools for their research and helping other biologists with their computational problems. Many of the techniques are relevant to molecular bioinformatics but the scope of the book is much broader, covering topics and techniques that are applicable to a range of scientific endeavours. Twenty-two chapters organized into six parts address the following topics (and more; see Contents): • Searching with regular expressions • The Unix command line • Python programming and debugging • Creating and editing graphics • Databases • Performing analyses on remote servers • Working with electronics While the main narrative focuses on Mac OS X, most of the concepts and examples apply to any operating system. Where there are differences for Windows and Linux users, parallel instructions are provided in the margin and in an appendix. The book is designed to be used as a self-guided resource for researchers, a companion book in a course, or as a primary textbook. Practical Computing for Biologists will free you from the most frustrating and time-consuming aspects of data processing so you can focus on the pleasures of scientific inquiry.

Do you have a biological question that could be readily answered by computational techniques, but little experience in programming? Do you want to learn more about the core techniques used in computational biology and bioinformatics? Written in an accessible style, this guide provides a foundation for both newcomers to computer programming and those interested in learning more about computational biology. The chapters guide the reader through: a complete beginners' course to programming in Python, with an introduction to computing jargon; descriptions of core bioinformatics methods with working Python examples; scientific computing techniques, including image analysis, statistics and machine learning. This book also functions as a language reference written in straightforward English, covering the most common Python language elements and a glossary of computing and biological terms. This title will teach undergraduates, postgraduates and professionals working in the life sciences how to program with Python, a powerful, flexible and easy-to-use language.

This practical, hands-on guide shows how to develop a structured approach to biological data and the tools needed to analyze it. It's aimed at scientists and students learning computational approaches to biological data, as well as experienced biology researchers starting to use computers to handle data.

This book is designed specifically as a guide for Computer Scientists needing an introduction to Cell Biology. The text explores three different facets of biology: biological systems, experimental methods, and language and nomenclature. The author discusses what biologists are trying to determine from their experiments, how various experimental procedures are used and how they relate to accepted concepts in computer science, and the vocabulary necessary to read and understand current literature in biology. The book is an invaluable reference tool and an excellent starting point for a more comprehensive examination of cell biology.

Comprehensive and concise, this handbook has chapters on computing visualization, large database designs, advanced pattern matching and other key bioinformatics techniques. It is a practical guide to computing in the growing field of Bioinformatics--the study of how information is represented and transmitted in biological systems, starting at the molecular level.

This textbook introduces fundamental concepts of bioinformatics and computational biology to the students and researchers in biology, medicine, veterinary science, agriculture, and bioengineering . The respective chapters provide detailed information on biological databases, sequence alignment, molecular evolution, next-generation sequencing, systems biology, and statistical computing using R. The book also presents a case-based discussion on clinical, veterinary, agricultural bioinformatics, and computational bioengineering for application-based learning in the respective fields. Further, it offers readers guidance on reconstructing and analysing biological networks and highlights computational methods used in systems medicine and genome-wide association mapping of diseases. Given its scope, this textbook offers an essential introductory book on bioinformatics and computational biology for undergraduate and graduate students in the life sciences, botany, zoology, physiology, biotechnology, bioinformatics, and genomic science as well as systems biology, bioengineering and the agricultural, and veterinary sciences.

Learn the data skills necessary for turning large sequencing datasets into reproducible and robust biological findings. With this practical guide, youâ??ll learn how to use freely available open source tools to extract meaning from large complex biological data sets. At no other point in human history has our ability to understand lifeâ??s complexities been so dependent on our skills to work with and analyze data. This intermediate-level book teaches the general computational and data skills you need to analyze biological data. If you have experience with a scripting language like Python, youâ??re ready to get started. Go from handling small problems with messy scripts to tackling large problems with clever methods and tools Process bioinformatics data with powerful Unix pipelines and data tools Learn how to use exploratory data analysis techniques in the R language Use efficient methods to work with genomic range data and range operations Work with common genomics data file formats like FASTA, FASTQ, SAM, and BAM Manage your bioinformatics project with the Git version control system Tackle tedious data processing tasks with with Bash scripts and Makefiles

-Teaches the reader how to use Unix, which is the key to basic computing and allows the most flexibility for bioinformatics applications -Written specifically with the needs of molecular biologists in mind -Easy to follow, written for beginners with no computational knowledge -Includes examples from biological data analysis -Can be use either for self-teaching or in courses