ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the restriction maps of DNA, rough landmark maps of the more detailed underlying sequences, clones and clone maps. It gives some problems associated with reading the DNA sequences themselves. The book presents aspects of comparing sequences for finding common patterns. Comparing two or more sequences is one of the most important mathematical applications in molecular biology. New developments in algorithms and in probability and statistics have resulted from these biological problems. It also covers the statistics of pattern counts in sequences that is surprisingly subtle. Molecular structure in biology is a central problem. Protein structure is a huge and largely unsolved problem that does not appear in this text. Molecular biology is an experimental subject and although the material of living organisms obeys the familiar laws of chemistry and physics, there are few real universals in biology.
