The Internet for Molecular Biologists: A Practical Approach

Citation

Doldi, L.M. (2006), "The Internet for Molecular Biologists: A Practical Approach", Online Information Review, Vol. 30 No. 3, pp. 316-317. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520610675870

Advances in molecular biology depend increasingly on the possibility of elaborating, and quickly sharing, huge amounts of data and information and by the possibility of easily communicating research results. In this context the internet plays an important role, as it provides scientists with the required instruments for accessing, elaborating and finally communicating information.

This book aims to give an overview of the possibilities offered to molecular biologists by the internet, and it is thematically organized in three sections. The first section is concerned with such general resources for molecular biology as literature databases, sequencing databases and phylogeny sites. The second part is dedicated to internet resources for specific fields of molecular genetics. Here, medical genetics resources connected to the human genetic project, databases for genes and diseases, for mutation and polymorphisms are described. A chapter is dedicated to agricultural biotechnology and provides a comprehensive description of most important internet resources in this field, such as the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the Plant Genome Database and the GrainGenes Database. Finally, a chapter is dedicated to such resources for cell and developmental biologists as gene expression patterns databases and complex pathways representation sites.

The last chapters of the book describe the technical possibilities that the internet offers molecular biologists, as well as to all scientists, for communicating research: synchronic and a‐synchronic communication tools, possibilities for setting up e‐learning platforms, technical options to set up individual lab web pages. Besides interesting ideas about the importance of communication among scientists and the dissemination scientific information among people, these last chapters also furnish some technical notions about PERL, XML and HTML programming.

Each chapter is structured for a practical approach: separated boxes and protocols give practical examples, how to search the cited databases or to use the different resources. Each thematic paragraph is accompanied by a detailed list of links and further readings, thus offering the opportunity to study further those topics the reader is interested in. The book is clearly not planned for end‐to‐end reading; rather, chapters can be selected depending on the reader's interests.

This book is an introduction and an overview about the possibilities offered by the internet, and it is especially helpful for those biologists who are not at home on a computer but rather in a lab. The internet is here presented as a huge electronic library with enormous possibilities and resources (both freely available or fee‐based), also for specific fields like those presented here, and it is clearly shown as an instrument that modern scientists must understand.