October 15, 2007 (Vol. 27, No. 18)
URL:
http://www.ebi.ac.uk/2can/home.html
Rating:
Strong Points: Good intro to subject
Weak Points: Not a replacement for a college course
Summary:
The challenges of instruction in a high-level discipline like bioinformatics are numerous. For one, the subject crosses multiple areas of scientific investigation. As the 2Can site notes, bioinformatics is at the interface of the biological and computational sciences. Even this is overly simplistic, though, as subdisciplines include biophysics, biochemistry, and organismal, cellular, and molecular biology combined with database analysis, algorithm development, and computer programming. Recognizing these different facets to the subject, 2Can starts with the basics (Basic Biology) and quickly moves to descriptions of the major databases (taxonomic, nucleotide, genomic, protein, microarray, and bibliographic). Tutorials are available for nucleotide analysis, protein function, proteomic analysis, protein structure, genome browsing, and others. A section called Graphics Resource has images and these too are peppered with educational text content. While 2Can will never replace a college-level course on Bioinformatics, it does provide a nice introduction to the subject and will be welcomed by nonbiologists hoping to enter the field of bioinformatics.
