Building Bioinformatics Solutions

Despite the diversity of activities and applications of modern bioinformatics, the basic methodology needed to tackle problems is common to most projects. The aim of this book is to provide a comprehensive introduction to this methodology to aid the management and analysis of data from molecular biology experiments. Modern bioinformatics encompasses a broad and ever-changing range of activities involved with the management and analysis of data from molecular biology experiments. Despite the diversity of activities and applications, the basic methodology and core tools needed to tackle bioinformatics problems is common to many projects. Building Bioinformatics Solutions provides a comprehensive introduction to this methodology, explaining how to acquire and use the most popular development tools, how to apply them to build processing pipelines, and how to make the results available through visualisations and web-based services for deployment either locally or via the Internet. The main development tools covered in this book are the MySQL database management system, the Perl programming language, and the R language for statistical computing. These industry standard open source tools form the core of many bioinformatics projects, both in academia and industry.

The methodologies introduced are platform independent, and all the examples that feature have been tested on Windows, Linux and Mac OS. This advanced textbook is suitable for graduate students and researchers in the life sciences who wish to automate analyses or create their own databases and web-based tools. No prior knowledge of software development is assumed. Having worked through the book, the reader should have the necessary core skills to develop computational solutions for their specific research programmes. The book will also help the reader overcome the inertia associated with penetrating this field, and provide them with the confidence and understanding required to go on to develop more advanced bioinformatics skills.