Encyclopaedia of Bioinformatics (8 Vols-Set)

Contents: Vol. I. Bio-Programming Languages: Preface. 1. History of computers. 2. Computer architecture. 3. Computer software concepts. 4. Application softwares for computers. 5. Database management system. 6. Data communications. 7. Internet basics. 8. Introductory concepts. 9. C Fundamentals. 10. Operators and expressions. 11. Data input and output. 12. Control statements. 13. Preparing and running a complete C Program. 14. Data abstraction. 15. Hiding the implementation. 16. Initialization and cleanup. 17. Function overloading and default arguments. 18. Constants. 19. Inline functions. 20. Name control.

Vol. II. Genetics: Preface. 21. Genetics and the organism. 22. Patterns of inheritance. 23. Chromosomal basis of heredity. 24. Gene interaction. 25. Gene manipulation: an all-embracing technique. 26. Basic techniques. 27. Cutting and joining DNA molecules. 28. Basic biology of Plasmid and Phage vectors. 29. Cosmids, Phasmids and other advanced vectors. 30. Cloning strategies. 31. Sequencing and Mutagenesis. Genetics glossary.

Vol. III. Statistical Methods and Database Management System: Preface. 32. Elementary concepts in statistics. 33. Basic statistics. 34. Nonparametric statistics. 35. ANOVA/MANOVA. 36. Process analysis. 37. Survival/failure time analysis. 38. Quality control charts. 39. Representative visualization techniques. 40. Experimental design (Industrial DOE). 41. Database-management system. 42. Data models. 43. Relational model. 44. Relational databases-SQL. 45. Database system architectures.

Vol. IV. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry: Preface. 46. Systems and methods of molecular biology. 47. Macromolecules. 48. Nucleic acids. 49. The physical structure of protein molecules. 50. Macromolecular interactions and the structure of complex aggregates. 51. The genetic material. 52. DNA replication. 53. Repair. 54. Transcription. 55. Translation. 56. Mutagenesis, mutations and mutants. 57. Biochemistry and medicine. 58. Water and pH. 59. Amino acids and peptides. 60. Proteins: determination of primary structure. 61. Proteins: higher orders of structure. 62. Protein: Myoglobin and Hemoglobin. 63. Enzymes: mechanism of action. 64. Enzymes: kinetics. 65. Enzymes: regulation of activities. 66. Bioenergetics: the role of ATP. 67. Biologic oxidation. 68. The respiratory chain and Oxidative Phosphorylation. 69. Carbohydrates of physiologic significance. 70. Lipids of physiologic significance. 71. Overview of metabolism.

Vol. V. Biotechnology and Industrial Microbiology: Preface. 72. Introduction. 73. Animal biotechnology. 74. Plant biotechnology. 75. Social aspects of biotechnology. 76. Microbial cell structure and function. 77. Microbial growth and nutrition. 78. Microbial metabolism. 79. Industrial microorganisms. 80. Fermentation media. 81. Fermentation systems. 82. Downstream processing. 83. Product development, regulation and safety.

Vol. VI. Structural Bioinformatics: Preface. 84. Historical introduction and overview. 85. Collecting and storing sequences in the laboratory. 86. Alignment of pairs of sequences. 87. Multiple sequence alignment. 88. Protein classification and structure prediction. 89. Genome analysis.

Vol. VII. Bio-Computing Languages: Preface. I. Perl for bioinformatics: 90. Perl, Control flow and Motif. 91. Basic operators, lists and arrays, file handling and pattern matching. 92. Subroutines, Hashes and application in bioinformatics. II. Java, Biojava and Biojava packages: 93. Java for bioinformatics. 94. Java programming. 95. Object oriented programming. 96. Exception handling. 97. Event handling. 98. Interfaces and packages. 99. Multithreading in Java. 100. Applets and graphics. 101. Java database and connectivity. 102. Network programming with Java. Biojava. Glossary of definitions used in JAVA. 

Vol. VIII. Bioinformatics Software: Preface. 103. ClustalV Multiple sequence alignments. 104. ClustalW Version 1.7. 105. RasMol. 106. Oligo. 107. Mol Script. 108. TreeView. 109. Alscript. 110. Phylip. Bioinformatics glossary. Genomic glossary. Bioinformatics thesaurus.

"Bioinformatics is traditionally the science of analysing human biological characteristics and is a marriage between computer science and biology. In computer technology, bioinformatics is related to authentication and security techniques that rely on measurable individual biological stamps to recognise or verify an individual's identity. For example fingerprints, handprints or voice recognition might be used to enable access to a computer in a room, or to an electronic commerce account.

Security schemes are categorised into three levels: Level 1 relies on something the person carries, such as an ID badge with photo or computer cardkey. Level 2 relies on something the person knows, such as password or a code number; and Level 3, the highest level, relies on something that is a part of the person's biological makeup or behaviour, such as a fingerprint, the pattern of blood vessels in a retina or a signature.

Bioinformatics is also involved with areas like fingerprint reading, handwriting recognition, voice recognition, and telemetrics, telemedicine and DNA matching. Students should have an aptitude for information technology and medical sciences to take up study in this field, although this encyclopaedia has been brought out not only for the students but for researchers and practitioners in the area of biological information systems.

Bioinformatics is an emerging discipline and has applications in frontline areas of biotechnology like drug design, gene therapy, diagnostics, crop improvement, biochemical process etc. This multi-volume encyclopaedia covers areas, such as, computational genomics, molecular modelling, statistical methods, computational techniques etc. State of the art computer systems and software tools have been used to explain different facets of bioinformatics." (jacket)