Which bioinformatics books would you recommend to a programmer / software engineer?

Question

[juanma_lace]

I'm a graduate Software Engineer and new in the field of Bioinformatics. Which book would you recommend to me?

Thank you!

[Devon Ryan]

Since you're already familiar with CS, you'd be better served by picking up some books on molecular biology and genetics.

Answer 1

[Siva]

Discovering Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformatics by A. Malcolm Campbell and Laurie J. Heyer.

This is one of the best books especially for someone without much Biology background but interested in learning Bioinformatics.

Answer 2

[Ram]

This has been the best book I've read on Bioinformatics Algorithms - the perfect mix for someone with a CS background that wants a deep look into how mathematical concepts are applied to biological data:

Biological Sequence Analysis: Probabilistic Models of Proteins and Nucleic Acids

[Devon Ryan]

The Durbin et al. book really is about the closest thing there is to the "standard bioinformatics text".

[Ram]

I fell in love with that book. It is so wondrous to be able to look into the reasoning behind why we do what we do!

Answer 3

[Jean-Karim Heriche]

What you should know would depend on which aspect of bioinformatics you're interested in. As a CS-trained person, you may need to be able to communicate with people coming from the bio side of things. This means acquiring domain-specific vocabulary and a basic understanding of the questions you'll get to work on. You should probably start with a biology text book if your knowledge in that domain is limited. At the moment the big thing is high-throughput sequencing and human genetics, so Devon Ryan's comment is a good starting point. However, depending on which environment you end up in, you may not need to know much to start with and may pick things up as you go.

[russhh]

Maybe try to find a biological mentor within your uni/firm