Evolutionary Bioinformatics
by Donald R. Forsdyke /
2016 / English / PDF
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Now in its third edition and supplemented with more online
material, this book aims to make the "new" information-based
(rather than gene-based) bioinformatics intelligible both to the
"bio" people and the "info" people. Books on bioinformatics have
traditionally served gene-hunters, and biologists who wish to
construct family trees showing tidy lines of descent. While
dealing extensively with the exciting topics of gene discovery
and database-searching, such books have hardly considered genomes
as information channels through which multiple forms and levels
of information have passed through the generations. This “new
bioinformatics” contrasts with the "old" gene-based
bioinformatics that so preoccupies previous texts. Forms of
information that we are familiar with (mental, textual) are
related to forms with which we are less familiar (hereditary).
The book extends a line of evolutionary thought that leads from
the nineteenth century (Darwin, Butler, Romanes, Bateson),
through the twentieth (Goldschmidt, White), and into the twenty
first (the final works of the late Stephen Jay Gould). Long an
area of controversy, diverging views may now be reconciled.
Now in its third edition and supplemented with more online
material, this book aims to make the "new" information-based
(rather than gene-based) bioinformatics intelligible both to the
"bio" people and the "info" people. Books on bioinformatics have
traditionally served gene-hunters, and biologists who wish to
construct family trees showing tidy lines of descent. While
dealing extensively with the exciting topics of gene discovery
and database-searching, such books have hardly considered genomes
as information channels through which multiple forms and levels
of information have passed through the generations. This “new
bioinformatics” contrasts with the "old" gene-based
bioinformatics that so preoccupies previous texts. Forms of
information that we are familiar with (mental, textual) are
related to forms with which we are less familiar (hereditary).
The book extends a line of evolutionary thought that leads from
the nineteenth century (Darwin, Butler, Romanes, Bateson),
through the twentieth (Goldschmidt, White), and into the twenty
first (the final works of the late Stephen Jay Gould). Long an
area of controversy, diverging views may now be reconciled.