The book introduces the bioinformatics resources and tools available for the study of allergenicity. Allergy symptoms affect more than 25% of the population in industrialized countries. At the same time, biotechnology is a rapidly developing field, which often involves the introduction of potentially allergenic novel proteins into drugs or foods. It is essential to avoid transferring a gene that encodes a major allergenic protein (from any source) into a drug/food crop that did not previously contain that protein. Accurately distinguishing candidate genes from allergens before transferring them into a drug or food would aid preventive efforts to curb the rising incidence of allergies. Several public databases have been created in response to increasing allergen data. The resources provided by these databases have paved the way for the creation of specialized bioinformatics tools that allow allergenicity to be predicted. The book is a useful resource for biologists and biomedical informatics scientists, as well as clinicians. Dr. Ailin Tao is the chief of Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Allergy & Clinical Immunology, Principal Investigator of the State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University; Dr. Prof. Eyal Raz is a Professor of Medicine at University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA. They collaborate very well on allergy research and this book editi ng.

An interdisciplinary bioinformatics science aims to develop methodology and analysis tools to explore large-volume of biological data using conventional and modern computer science, statistics, and mathematics, as well as pattern recognition, reconstruction, machine learning, simulation and iterative approaches, molecular modeling, folding, networking, and artificial intelligence. Written by international team of life scientists, this Bioinformatics book provides some updates on bioinformatics methods, resources, approaches, and genome analysis tools useful for molecular sciences, medicine and drug designs, as well as plant sciences and agriculture. I trust chapters of this book should provide advanced knowledge for university students, life science researchers, and interested readers on some latest developments in the bioinformatics field.

This book on bioinformatics is designed as an introduction to the conventional details of genomics and proteomics as well as a practical comprehension text with an extended scope on the state-of-the-art bioinformatic details pertinent to next-generation sequencing, translational/clinical bioinformatics and vaccine-design related viral informatics.It includes four major sections: (i) An introduction to bioinformatics with a focus on the fundamentals of information-theory applied to biology/microbiology, with notes on bioinformatic resources, data bases, information networking and tools; (ii) a collection of annotations on the analytics of biomolecular sequences, with pertinent details presented on biomolecular informatics, pairwise and multiple sequences, viral sequence informatics, next-generation sequencing and translational/clinical bioinformatics; (iii) a novel section on cytogenetic and organelle bioinformatics explaining the entropy-theoretics of cellular structures and the underlying informatics of synteny correlations; and (iv) a comprehensive presentation on phylogeny and species informatics.The book is aimed at students, faculty and researchers in biology, health/medical sciences, veterinary/agricultural sciences, bioengineering, biotechnology and genetic engineering. It will be a useful companion for managerial personnel in the biotechnology and bioengineering industries as well as in health/medical science.

A common approach to understanding the functional repertoire of a genome is through functional genomics. With systems biology burgeoning, bioinformatics has grown to a larger extent for plant genomes where several applications in the form of protein-protein interactions (PPI) are used to predict the function of proteins. With plant genes evolutionarily conserved, the science of bioinformatics in agriculture has caught interest with myriad of applications taken from bench side to in silico studies. A multitude of technologies in the form of gene analysis, biochemical pathways and molecular techniques have been exploited to an extent that they consume less time and have been cost-effective to use. As genomes are being sequenced, there is an increased amount of expression data being generated from time to time matching the need to link the expression profiles and phenotypic variation to the underlying genomic variation. This would allow us to identify candidate genes and understand the molecular basis/phenotypic variation of traits. While many bioinformatics methods like expression and whole genome sequence data of organisms in biological databases have been used in plants, we felt a common reference showcasing the reviews for such analysis is wanting. We envisage that this dearth would be facilitated in the form of this Springer book on Agricultural Bioinformatics. We thank all the authors and the publishers Springer, Germany for providing us an opportunity to review the bioinformatics works that the authors have carried in the recent past and hope the readers would find this book attention grabbing.

When I entered the field of allergy in the early 1970s, the standard textbook was a few hundred pages, and the specialty was so compact that texts were often authored entirely by a single individual and were never larger than one volume. Compare this with Allergy Frontiers: Epigenetics, Allergens, and Risk Factors, the present s- volume text with well over 150 contributors from throughout the world. This book captures the explosive growth of our specialty since the single-author textbooks referred to above. The unprecedented format of this work lies in its meticulous attention to detail yet comprehensive scope. For example, great detail is seen in manuscripts dealing with topics such as “Exosomes, naturally occurring minimal antigen presenting units” and “Neuropeptide S receptor 1 (NPSR1), an asthma susceptibility gene.” The scope is exemplified by the unique approach to disease entities normally dealt with in a single chapter in most texts. For example, anaphylaxis, a topic usually confined to one chapter in most textbooks, is given five chapters in Allergy Frontiers. This approach allows the text to employ multiple contributors for a single topic, giving the reader the advantage of being introduced to more than one vi- point regarding a single disease.

In the U.S. alone, severe food-related allergic reactions account for an estimated 30,000 emergency room visits and 150 deaths per year - unsettling statistics for food product developers and manufacturers who are charged with ensuring food safety and quality throughout the entire farm-to-table production chain. Providing the clear-cut information

This book illustrates the importance and significance of bioinformatics in the field of agriculture. It first introduces the basic concepts of bioinformatics, such as homologous sequence and gene function analyses, determination of protein structures, and discusses machine learning applications for an in-depth understanding of the desired genes and proteins based on commonly used bioinformatics software and tools, e.g. BLAST, molecular modelling, molecular-docking and simulations, protein-protein and domain-domain interactions. The book also describes recent advances in the high-throughput analysis of whole genome and transcriptome using next-generation sequencing platforms, and functional proteome studies. It also examines the role of computational biology in understanding and improving the nutrient quality and yield of crops. Lastly, the book explores a comprehensive list of applications of bioinformatics to improve plant yield, biomass, and health, and the challenges involved.

This book consists of nine chapters covering a variety of bioinformatics subjects, ranging from database resources for protein allergens, unravelling genetic determinants of complex disorders, characterization and prediction of regulatory motifs, computational methods for identifying the best classifiers and key disease genes in large-scale transcriptomic and proteomic experiments, functional characterization of inherently unfolded proteins/regions, protein interaction networks and flexible protein-protein docking. The computational algorithms are in general presented in a way that is accessible to advanced undergraduate students, graduate students and researchers in molecular biology and genetics. The book should also serve as stepping stones for mathematicians, biostatisticians, and computational scientists to cross their academic boundaries into the dynamic and ever-expanding field of bioinformatics.

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Over the past 20 years, public concerns have grown in response to the apparent rising prevalence of food allergy and related atopic conditions, such as eczema. Although evidence on the true prevalence of food allergy is complicated by insufficient or inconsistent data and studies with variable methodologies, many health care experts who care for patients agree that a real increase in food allergy has occurred and that it is unlikely to be due simply to an increase in awareness and better tools for diagnosis. Many stakeholders are concerned about these increases, including the general public, policy makers, regulatory agencies, the food industry, scientists, clinicians, and especially families of children and young people suffering from food allergy. At the present time, however, despite a mounting body of data on the prevalence, health consequences, and associated costs of food allergy, this chronic disease has not garnered the level of societal attention that it warrants. Moreover, for patients and families at risk, recommendations and guidelines have not been clear about preventing exposure or the onset of reactions or for managing this disease. Finding a Path to Safety in Food Allergy examines critical issues related to food allergy, including the prevalence and severity of food allergy and its impact on affected individuals, families, and communities; and current understanding of food allergy as a disease, and in diagnostics, treatments, prevention, and public policy. This report seeks to: clarify the nature of the disease, its causes, and its current management; highlight gaps in knowledge; encourage the implementation of management tools at many levels and among many stakeholders; and delineate a roadmap to safety for those who have, or are at risk of developing, food allergy, as well as for others in society who are responsible for public health.