Briefings in Bioinformatics Advance Access originally published online on September 25, 2006
Briefings in Bioinformatics 2007 8(1):65-67; doi:10.1093/bib/bbl031
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Book Review |
Essential Bioinformatics
Jin Xiong
Cambridge University Press; ISBN: 0-521-60082-0; 339pp.; 2006;
£65.00 (hardcover); £29.00 (paperback).
| The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below. |
Few would argue the need for today's college biology majors to have basic skills in bioinformatics. Yet, their undergraduate faculty faces several challenges in providing these skills, particularly at smaller colleges. First, faculty members who teach bioinformatics have usually been trained in molecular biology, genetics or biochemistry. Therefore, most do not have extensive applied mathematics experience beyond statistics. Second, bioinformatics textbooks for undergraduate biology majors are rare. Most bioinformatics books are geared to researchers, computer programmers or graduate students. Others are simple user manuals, with little coverage of critical evaluation of the output. Third, most students today have great ‘point-and-click’ computing skills, but minimal understanding or patience for command-line computing or programming.
In light of these challenges to introducing undergraduate students to bioinformatics, it was quite a joy to read and review Professor Jin Xiong's recent book, Essential Bioinformatics. This compact, economical, first edition of
Associate Professor of Biology,
University of Indianapolis,
1400 E Hanna Ave,
Indianapolis, IN 46227, USA
E-mail: mritke@uindy.edu