Biological Abstracts/RRM 48 (8): 131999. August 1996

The Biochemist: October/November 1996

In the last few years the Internet has grown to the point that it now impacts on almost all walks of life in a major way. In many respects an e-mail address has become as important a communication facility as a fax machine or even telephone. The Internet has also developed into a major tool for scientists, and in particular molecular biologists, offering the ability to screen databases, analyse sequences for functional motifs and swap research tips with other researchers. The Internet is becoming as important as some laboratory techniques in aiding research. There is no need to be a computer boffin to start benefiting from the wealth of information available since many of the programs and facilities explored in the book have very user-friendly interfaces.

The basics of the Internet-from e-mail messages, databases, newsgroups and the World Wide Web-are discussed and explained in easy-to-follow sections with both further reading and pointers to on-line documentation. Advanced functions, such as sequence retrieval and database screening, are covered in great detail with step-by-step examples and full explanations of all commands and results. The sections covering specific resources for human and mouse genetics, fungi, invertebrates, plants and microbes provide an invaluable reference library and should prove to be well worth investigating.

I feel that this book is not only value for money as a tutorial, but essential as a guide to locating other Internet resources. I spent an enjoyable day reading the book and the next three days following up and further investigating the resources. This is a reference I will be consulting time and time again.

Heredity 77 (1996) 448-451 The Genetical Society of Great Britain

With the internet being the darling of the media nowadays a plethora of dubious titles claiming to instruct the general populace on the joys of the internet abound. Thus it was with some trepidation that I approached this book. What should a volume claiming to be for the molecular biologist do? It must inform the newcomer as to what the internet does and how to get on it. Having excited the novice the book then needs to act as a reference to some of the more important sites on the internet. In these two areas the book certainly succeeds.

The book effectively splits itself into two parts, one giving information on the internet and what types of service are available and the second a reference section detailing important internet sites.

The introductory chapters explain what the internet is and its rather bizarre nomenclature. The authors are realistic; they inform the reader enough to remove the mystery, while recognising that techno-babble can turn users off. The different types of access to the internet are covered, e.g. e-mail, WWW and gopher. The detail given is enough to allow the user to either access the services themselves (e.g. mailing lists) or to go to their network manager armed with knowledge of what they require. For many users the ability to explain what they want to their computing colleagues may well justify the purchase of the book.

Once connected the next two chapters take the reader through some of the remote software tools available for sequence retrieval and analysis and computational gene identification. Anyone who has not used a remote analysis system will find this an enormous boon. To use these programs the user e-mails a request (usually containing a sequence) to the server which merrily does its magic and e-mails the results. This means that even if the only networking available is email the most powerful machines around the world can be accessed. In fact an incredible amount of the real work of the internet is done in just this way. Several different servers and the programs they run are detailed along with how to get help on them. This is important because in a small book it is not possible to detail all the options available. Rather like a large-scale map marked with the tourist information offices, this book gives a good guide to how to get there and where to go to get more detail.

The final five chapters are pure reference, consisting of listings of internet resources for human and mouse (27 pages), fungi (6 pages), invertebrates (6 pages), plants (6 pages) and microbiology (7 pages). Obviously World Wide Web sites predominate but all the major FTP sites, news groups and servers are covered. For those who already are connected these five chapters are the justification for buying the book. The coverage is sufficient to ensure that they remain useful for some time.

I heartily recommend this volume for anyone who uses or wishes to use the internet.

...a guide that aims to help the 'computer illiterate' scientist get motoring on the 'superhighway' is timely....there are some really good parts to this book....a clearly written introduction to the mysteries of Email, mailing lists, newsgroups and other Internet tools....the chapter by Glusman et al. on how to meet other biologists in a BioMOO virtual world made me want to have a go!....the highlight of the book is the chapter by Fickett and Guigo on 'Computational Gene Identification'....excellent guide to gene identification....this book would have been excellent if it had been half the length...

Examples of how the Internet is used by molecular biologists were informative...useful for those who have just linked to the Internet.