1 Bioinformatics: A Practical Guide to the Analysis of Genes and Proteins, Second Edition Andreas D. Baxevanis, B.F. Francis Ouellette Copyright  2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBNs: 0-471-38390-2 (Hardback); 0-471-38391-0 (Paper); 0-471-22392-1 (Electronic) 1 BIOINFORMATICS AND THE INTERNET Andreas D. Baxevanis Genome Technology Branch National Human Genome Research Institute National Institutes of Health Bethesda, Maryland Bioinformatics represents a new, growing area of science that uses computational approaches to answer biological questions. Answering these questions requires that investigators take advantage of large, complex data sets (both public and private) in a rigorous fashion to reach valid, biological conclusions. The potential of such an approach is beginning to change the fundamental way in which basic science is done, helping to more efficiently guide experimental design in the laboratory. With the explosion of sequence and structural information available to research- ers, the field of bioinformatics is playing an increasingly large role in the study of fundamental biomedical problems. The challenge facing computational biologists will be to aid in gene discovery and in the design of molecular modeling, site-directed mutagenesis, and experiments of other types that can potentially reveal previously unknown relationships with respect to the structure and function of genes and pro- teins. This challenge becomes particularly daunting in light of the vast amount of data that has been produced by the Human Genome Project and other systematic sequencing efforts to date. Before embarking on any practical discussion of computational methods in solv- ing biological problems, it is necessary to lay the common groundwork that will enable users to both access and implement the algorithms and tools discussed in this book. We begin with a review of the Internet and its terminology, discussing major Internet protocol classes as well, without becoming overly engaged in the engineering The files you downloaded is from http://www.en8848.com The files you downloaded is from http://www.en8848.com