
Ask HN: What are the best bioinformatics books you've read? - mojoe
I got a biochemistry degree 12 years ago but have been writing software outside the field ever since. I&#x27;m curious about what the state of the art in bioinformatics is these days -- if there are any experts here I&#x27;d be grateful for some interesting resources!
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ArtWomb
I'm far from claiming expertise in the field. But I'd start with the UCSD
Bioinformatics Specialization course

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/bioinformatics](https://www.coursera.org/learn/bioinformatics)

The Biostar Handbook and BioPython library also have active communities for
self learners

[https://www.biostarhandbook.com/](https://www.biostarhandbook.com/)

[http://biopython.org/DIST/docs/tutorial/Tutorial.html](http://biopython.org/DIST/docs/tutorial/Tutorial.html)

Best of luck ;)

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mojoe
thanks, great resources!

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ethanwillis
Yea, if you are looking to get up to date. I'd start with maybe a semi-recent
reference book. But after that it's going to be all papers.

This looks decent: [https://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Bioinformatics-
Introductio...](https://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Bioinformatics-Introduction-
Mathematical-
Computational/dp/1420070339/ref=asc_df_1420070339/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=241914467431&hvpos=3o4&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15711499340664576922&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9013538&hvtargid=pla-584595553911&psc=1#customerReviews)

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arandr0x
Wouldn't use books (just read papers, I liked Bioinformatics back in the day
but it's a bit too math-y, generally the quality is there though). Do you mean
genomics or some of the other subdomains of bioinformatics? Do you mean more
for human health or ecology applications?

On a semi related note I got a biochemistry degree 10 years ago and have been
writing software outside the field ever since. My partner still is in genomics
so I do somewhat keep up but I definitely still love biochemistry and miss
keeping up with it. So, uh, do you think you'd like to talk to someone about
your projects or share good papers or something?

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mojoe
I'm interested in modeling biochemical systems -- a lot of work falls under
this umbrella. Thanks for the offer of chatting about this stuff, if you're
still interested my email address is joe@compellingpython.com

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highhedgehog
This is a book I loved:
[https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783642072857](https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783642072857)

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nextos
I only know of 2 that deserve the term bioinformatics, which is really abused
when data wrangling should be used in place.

Those are Durbin et al 1998 and Pevzner et al 2000.

Durbin et al is a classic on HMMs, but some sections feel incomplete.

