Main description:

The application ofcomputational methods to solve scientific and practical problems in genome research created a new interdisciplinary area that transcends boundaries tradi- tionally separating genetics, biology, mathematics, physics, and computer science. Com- puters have, of course, been intensively used in the field of life sciences for many years, even before genome research started, to store and analyze DNA or protein sequences; to explore and model the three-dimensional structure, the dynamics, and the function of biopolymers; to compute genetic linkage or evolutionary processes; and more. The rapid development of new molecular and genetic technologies, combined with ambitious goals to explore the structure and function ofgenomes ofhigher organisms, has generated, how- ever, not only a huge and exponentially increasing body of data but also a new class of scientific questions. The nature and complexity of these questions will also require, be- yond establishing a new kind ofalliance between experimental and theoretical disciplines, the development of new generations both in computer software and hardware technolo- gies.
New theoretical procedures, combined with powerful computational facilities, will substantially extend the horizon of problems that genome research can attack with suc- cess. Many of us still feel that computational models rationalizing experimental findings in genome research fulfill their promises more slowly than desired. There is also an uncer- tainty concerning the real position of a "theoretical genome research" in the network of established disciplines integrating their efforts in this field.

Contents:

Evaluating the Statistical Significance of Multiple Distinct Local Alignments; S.F. Altscul. Hidden Markov Models for Human Genes: Periodic Patterns in Exon Sequence; S. Brunak. Identification of Muscle-Specific Transcriptional Regulatory Regions; J.W. Fickett. A Systematic Analysis of Gene Functions by the Metabolic Pathway Database; M. Kanehisa. Polymer Dynamics of DNA, Chromatin and Chromosomes; J. Langowski. Is Whole Human Genome Sequencing Feasible?; E.W. Myers. Sequence patterns Diagnostic of Structure and Function; T.F. Smith. Recognizing Functional Domains in Biological Sequences; G.D. Stormo. Stochastic Modelling in Molecular Genetics; P. Tautu. The Integrated Genomic Database (IGD): Enhancing the Productivity of Gene Mapping Projects; S.P. Bryant. Error Analysis of Genetic Linkage Data; R. Cottingham. Managing Accelerating Data Growth in the Genome Database; K.H. Fasman. Advances in Statistical Methods for Linkage Analysis; D.E. Weeks. Exploring Heterogeneous Molecular Biology Databases in the Context of the Object-Protocol Model; V.M. Markowitz. Comprehensive Genome Information Systems; O. Ritter. Visualizing the Genome; D.B. Searls. Data Management for Ligand-Based Drug Design; K. Aberer. 7 Additional Articles. Index.