[Biojava-l] Please Clarify me regarding Bio-Java

[Thomas Down]

Hello, and thanks for your interest,

On Fri, Feb 15, 2002 at 11:46:11AM -0000, nagendra  b wrote:
> 
> I Nagendra working as Project Leader for well eastablished Software organization on Java Platform kindly request you to clarify me few doubts regarding bio-java.
> 
> 1.Is it necssary to hava a prior knowledge in Bio-Informatics to learn Bio-Java?
> 2. Can people working in Java without any knowledge of Bio-informatics work with Bio-Java?

This depends very much on what you're hoping to acheive with BioJava.
At the core of the package are Java interfaces for viewing, editing,
and manipulating sequence data.  Very little of this code is actually
dedicated to bioinformatics problems, although obviously that is
it's usual application.

The package also contains parsers for file formats and program
output which are more specific to bioinformatics.  But you'd
only want to use those to solve specific problems.

> 3. What is necesssary for Java experts to get acquintted
> with Bio-Java?

There's a certain amount of tutorial documentation on our website
at:

  http://www.biojava.org/tutorials/index.html

These should help you get started.  You might want to read
the first few chapters of a molecular biology textbook, too.
Or try some web searches.  For instance, knowing a little
about the structure of DNA is helpful when working with
DNA sequences:

   http://www.biology.arizona.edu/biochemistry/activities/DNA/10t.html

If you're having any trouble, you could try writing to
me or (if it's a BioJava-specific problem) to the mailing
list.

Hope this helps,

    Thomas.


PS.  There is a BioJava training workshop in Cambridge, UK, 
    from 18th to 22nd March, which you might find interesting:

   http://industry.ebi.ac.uk/projects/Events/biojava2002/biojava2002.html