Digital Code of Life: How Bioinformatics Is Revolutionizing Science, Medicine, and Business

As the other reviewer notes, this book does what it's meant to do: give you an overview of the myriad developments in bioinformatics since its inception. It's fairly engaging, though, for me, that's mostly due to the subject matter itself and not the writer's abilities. This is why I gave it four stars instead of five. The scientific explanations are usually not that great, even if the concepts aren't that difficult to understand given some understanding of the underlying biological concepts. I had to quit reading and go in Wikipedia to understand some of these concepts because I felt the author's explanations were just unnecessarily confusing. And the author often decides to jump from the narrative and devote a page to the science, which isn't a horrible thing to do, but I feel maybe the science could have either been explained more succinctly or integrated with the narrative better. So that, along with the worst proofreading I've encountered in a published book (multiple instances of missing words [like 'a' or 'the'], missing punctuation [periods, parentheses], inconsistent punctuation, etc.), prompts me to give a four-star rating. That said, it's certainly worth reading; and, from what I've surmised, it's the only published book on the history of bioinformatics (that isn't solely concerned with the Human Genome Project), so it's not like there are (m)any alternatives. I'll also note that even though this was published a few years ago, it feels slightly outdated already due to the perpetual advances in throughput and methodology in the field. A new edition (at least with an afterword explaining recent advances) would be nice.

It's been a while since I read this book. So I try to get back on my impressions. The book has a good sketch on the key developments of modern genomics and bioinformatics, full of gossips and vivid stories. It is a very difficult job to write a history or something close to that for a fast evolving field. And there are limited accounts on the business side too. To her credit, the author has done an excellent job. I had concerns over the accuracy and coverage of some contents and opinions. But given the breadth of the book, probably this is how good it can get. Other than that, it was a very interesting reading. I recommended it to a friend right the way.

Digital Code of Life is an excellent overview of the convergence of IT and life sciences which has occurred nearly overnight. In the space of a few short years, the human genetic code has been mapped, and we now are seeing how this will play out for healthcare, drug development, and the marketplace. If you are interested in getting a sense of what is behind all the headlines, it's a worthwhile read.