From: Daniel Amelang Date: 2005-04-07T12:39:19+09:00 Subject: Re: Ruby and Bioinformatics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLAST http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Education/BLASTinfo/information3.html http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/ I forgot to mention in my last post that the absolute *best* way to start out in the field is by reading this book: An Introduction to Bioinformatics Algorithms (Computational Molecular Biology) by Neil C. Jones, Pavel A. Pevzner http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262101068/104-4926621-9367941?v=glance I have no connection with the authors or the publisher. I just think it is the best book around for introducing bioinformatics to people with a programming background. All the other books I've read were very much for people in biology. The exercises are very simple and fun and get you programming real problems in biology in no time. And it's got a great biology primer chapter. Definitely the way to go, even if you just want to test the waters or start this as a hobby. Dan