Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics: Perl Programming for Bioinformatics

by James Tisdall

Book Overview

Historically, programming hasn't been considered a critical skill for biologists. But now, with access to vast amounts of biological data contained in public databases, programming skills are increasingly in strong demand in biology research and development. Perl, with its highly developed capacities in string handling, text processing, networking, and rapid prototyping, has emerged as the programming language of choice for biological data analysis...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0596003072
• ISBN13: 9780596003074
• Release Date: November 2003
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 396 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.8" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Good starting material for programming perl in bioinformatics

Combined with the authors other book, Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics, this book provides a good self-study guide for those interested in understanding bioinformatics. This book is useful for biologist who has some programming experience, as well as programmers with some biology knowledge. It's written in a style that should suite most readers, as I find it each and smooth to read. Those looking for strict definitions or theory should look elsewhere.

A good follow-on to Tisdall's other Perl book

This book is a continuation of Tisdall's "Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics" and thus illustrates more advanced Perl programming techniques. This book not only talks about Perl programming, but it goes into some detail on the subject of bioinformatics itself. It is assumed that the CS-type reader has a good understanding of biology and the goals of bioinformatic programming. Otherwise, the examples and projects within the book will not make sense. The following is a description of the book's contents: Part I: OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING IN PERL Chapter 1. Modular Programming with Perl - Talks about using modules so that other people can reuse your programs and you can reuse other people's modules in your own programs. Chapter 2. Data Structures and String Algorithms - Talks about all of the different data structures available through Perl and how to build up special structures in Perl that you might need to describe complex data. Also mentions various string algorithms that are used in analyzing biological data and implements them in Perl. Chapter 3. Object-Oriented Programming in Perl - Introduces object-orientation in Perl via a module that includes a class that keeps track of genes. Chapter 4. Sequence Formats and Inheritance - How to convert sequence files into alternate formats such as FASTA and GCG. The object-oriented concept of inheritance is also introduced. Chapter 5. A Class for Restriction Enzymes - By writing a more complex class, you get a bigger dose of object-orientated programming in biology. Part II: PERL AND BIOINFORMATICS Chapter 6. Perl and Relational Databases - Talks about SQL and the design of relational databases. MySQL is examined specifically. Chapter 7. Perl and the Web - You learn about web programming in Perl by seeing how to put a laboratory on the Web via Perl and CGI. Chapter 8. Perl and Graphics - Graphics programming in Perl is demonstrated when you learn to write a program that displays changing data to the Web. The graphical Perl module PD is discussed and demonstrated in a program. Chapter 9. Introduction to Bioperl - Introduces the reader to Bioperl, which is a group of open source Perl modules used for bioinformatics programming. They provide many basic facilities so you don't have to worry about them. Part III: Appendixes Appendix A. Perl Summary Appendix B. Installing Perl I really thought this was a 5-star book. However, it is not obvious from the title that this is really volume two of a two volume set of books on Perl programming for the biologist, so I can see where the lower ratings might have come from.

Good Companion text

This first half of the book focuses entirely on Object-Oriented(OO) Perl. The second half follows up with a general survey of various perl implementations of particular programming issues involving databasing, cgi, graphics, modules, etc, and BioPerl. This book does a good job of applying Perl in OO for Biology in the first half of the book. In the second half he overviews a few broad topics in bioinformatics; he doesn't go super specific, but its a sufficient overview and for me sparked more interest in understanding how I can use perl to handle my informatics issues. In the first half, the author does an excellent job on detailing the ins and outs of perl references and how to construct complex data structures. Indeed they are a bit strange looking at first, but the author breaks it down really good so pretty much anyone can understand it. For me the most intriguing part of the book was in the second half, which included relational databases, graphics, and bioperl. In particular, the chapter that covers Perl DBI and DBD::mysql was really cool. That secion was very helpful for me because I am familiar with php/mysql, but have not ever used Perl to interact with Mysql before. I especially liked the gif draw aka GD chapter. I had no idea how cool GD is. But moreover how it can be integrated with Perl to generate really cool looking plots. Before this book I always used gnuplot. But Tisdall shows you how to get to work with GD pretty good using basic practical examples. The chapter on BioPerl was especially helpful as well. In particular, he shows you what he did to install the beast. He shows you how to use the CPAN shell and again its really beneficial to read through. It motivated me to pursue other topics in bioperl and how I can use it to query different ncbi databases for example. Overall, the text provided a good overview on OO Perl and on various other topics involving Perl for Bioinformatics in general. I am glad I bought it. It was really very practical/useful - I refer to it all the time actually!

Great book, leads to others for true mastery

Published in late 2003, this clearly-written book picks up where "Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics" leaves off. Perl is very commonly used in the field of bioinformatics, and this book does a good job of surveying the more advanced topics in perl from the bioinformatics point-of-view. For a more thorough treatment of each of these topics though, the student will need to explore more specialized titles. While Tisdall's first volume teaches the core of procedural programming in Perl, this one takes you into the world of object-oriented (OO) programming. The first two chapters explore namespaces, modules, packages, references and data structures, all of which are prerequisites to OO programming. Common bioinformatics algorithms are introduced such as dynamic programming and approximate string matching. The next three chapters, 3-5, are the meat of this title. Here objects, methods and classes are introduced. Rather than just throwing out independent examples, these topics are developed by starting and building upon a Gene class, the first of several through which Tisdall guides the reader. Due to the practicality of these examples, they can even be used and improved by the reader for use in their own work. After this decent treatment of OO programming the book takes a turn into other realms of perl, each of which seems to have been written as a short introduction and for which other O'Reilly titles offer more complete coverage. These topics include the use of Perl to access relational databases, CGI programming and graphics generation using GD. If interested in any of these the reader should check out "Programming the Perl DBI", "CGI Programming with Perl" and "Perl Graphics Programming", respectively. Tisdall wraps up with a much-needed coverage of Bioperl, a large collection of Perl modules for common bioinformatics operations. I looked forward to this section most of all and was fairly disappointed with its brief, 28-page coverage. The entire chapter can currently be downloaded for free from O'Reilly's website as a PDF, but the Bioperl website has better examples and even a contributed course, though good documentation is still lacking in some areas. In all, I like this book because it does a good review of introducing object-oriented programming in Perl using relevant bioinformatics examples and introduces the reader to other topics including the DBI, CGI, and GD modules. While I believe this makes the book very useful, the coverage of each of the topics in this book will certainly not give the reader a mastery of any of them. For that, one will need to check out the three previously mentioned titles, along with "Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules." This book does a fine job of introducing these four titles from the bioinformatician's perspective.

Nice survey of topics, but not too deep on any one thing

"Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics" is the follow-up to Tisdall's earlier "Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics". Both books are part of O'Reilly's lauded "animal books" series; "Beginning" was graced with tadpoles, while "Mastering" sports a frog.Naturally, this book picks up where the earlier one left off, diving headfirst into the details of Perl modules. Chapter two is a quick pass over some basic data structures, with discussion of how you'd implement each in Perl. Subsequent chapters cover object-oriented programming in Perl, using Perl with relational databases, using Perl with web services, generating graphics on the fly with Perl, and the use of the Bioperl suite of libraries.As might be expected, all the coding examples in the book are drawn from reasonably realistic bioinformatics situations. There's a little bit less hand-holding on the biological side in this book, relative to the earlier volume -- which I think is a good idea, as it gives more space to focus on the programming material.The one weakness of this book is that it covers quite a few topics, which means that it doesn't really go into great depth on any of them. The "survey" approach is well done, and it's very nice to have biologically relevant examples and exercises for the breath of material that is addressed, but I think the book might have been stronger if it forewent the "Perl and the Web" and "Perl and Graphics" chapters in favor of more focus on the Bioperl libraries. If you're a bioinformatics programmer who enjoyed "Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics", and you want to get a better idea of what more advanced Perl programming looks like and what sorts of things you can do with Perl, this book is a nice place to start. However, if you're looking for more specific information, other more focused books might be a better choice, if you can live without the biologically focused code examples.