With a large number of prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes completely sequenced and more forthcoming, access to the genomic information and synthesizing it for the discovery of new knowledge have become central themes of modern biological research. Mining the genomic information requires the use of sophisticated computational tools. It therefore becomes imperative for the new generation of biologists to be familiar with many bioinformatics programs and databases to tackle the new challenges in the genomic era. To meet this goal, institutions in the United States and around the world are now offering graduate and undergraduate students bioinformatics-related courses to introduce them to relevant computational tools necessary for the genomic research. To support this important task, this text was written to provide comprehensive coverage on the state-of-the-art of bioinformatics in a clear and concise manner.

The idea of writing a bioinformatics textbook originated from my experience of teaching bioinformatics at Texas A&M University. I needed a text that was comprehensive enough to cover all major aspects in the field, technical enough for a college-level course, and sufficiently up to date to include most current algorithms while at the same time being logical and easy to understand. The lack of such a comprehensive text at that time motivated me to write extensive lecture notes that attempted to alleviate the problem. The notes turned out to be very popular among the students and were in great demand from those who did not even take the class.