1. Introduction to Bioinformatics and Sequence Analysis -- 2. Introduction to Internet Resources -- 3. Introduction to the BLAST suite and BLASTN -- 4. Protein BLAST: BLASTP -- 5. Cross-Molecular Searches: BLASTX and TBLASTN -- 6. Advanced Topics in BLAST -- 7. Bioinformatics Tools for the Laboratory -- 8. Protein Analysis -- 9. Explorations of Short Nucleotide Sequences -- 10. MicroRNAs and Pathway Analysis -- 11. Multiple Sequence Alignments -- 12. Browsing the Genome.

Practical Bioinformatics is specifically designed for biology majors, with heavy emphasis on learning the steps necessary to perform bioinformatics analysis to answer biological questions. The chapters are focused on sequence analysis activities, a frequently performed subset of the field of bioinformatics. This book is written for courses that have a practical, hands-on element and contains many exercises (e.g. database searches, protein analysis, data interpretation) to complement the straightforward and practical topics. This book is focused on the analysis of DNA, RNA, and protein sequences. The chapters take the reader through a commonly asked question \\\what can I learn about this sequence?\\\