Evolutionary Bioinformatics [Paperback]

Now in its third edition andsupplemented with more online material, this book aims to make the new information-based (rather than gene-based) bioinformaticsintelligibleboth to the bio people and the info people. Books on bioinformaticshave traditionally served gene-hunters, and biologists who wish toconstruct family trees showing tidy lines of descent. While dealingextensively with the exciting topics of gene discoveryand database-searching, such books have hardly considered genomes asinformation channels through which multiple forms and levels ofinformation have passed through the generations. This newbioinformatics contrasts with the old gene-based bioinformaticsthat so preoccupies previous texts. Forms of information that we arefamiliar with (mental, textual) are related to forms with which we areless familiar (hereditary). The book extends a line of evolutionarythought 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 JayGould). Long an area of controversy, diverging views may now bereconciled.

Part 1. Information and DNA.- 1. Memory  A Phenomenon of Arrangement.- 2. Chargaffs First Parity Rule.- 3. Information Levels and Barriers.- Part 2. Parity and Non-Parity.- 4. Chargaffs Second Parity Rule.- 5. Stems and Loops.- 6. Chargaffs Cluster Rule.- Part 3. Variation and Speciation.- 7. Mutation.- 8. Species Survival and Arrival.- 9. The Weak Point.- 10. Chargaffs GC Rule.- 11. Homostability.- Part 4. Conflict within Genomes.- 12. Conflict Resolution.- 13. Exons and Introns.- 14. Complexity.- Part 5. Conflict between Genomes.- 15. Self/Not-Self?.- 16. The Crowded Cytosol.- Part 6. Sex and Error-Correction.- 17. Rebooting the Genome.- 18. The Fifth Letter.- Part 7. Information and Mind.- 19. Memory  What is Arranged and Where?.- 20.Certainty Now Uncertain.