Bioinformatic approaches are increasingly necessary for biologists in a wide range of fields. This is particularly the case due to the explosion in the amount of raw data provided by microarray and ultra-high throughput sequencing technologies. There are a number of challenges for biologists in employing and learning bioinformatics techniques that a must be addressed in any book. First, bioinformatics covers a huge range of computational and mathematical methods, including structural biology, genome and sequence analysis and phylogenetics; therefore, a range of expertise is required. Second, the biologist does not generally have specialist bioinformatics expertise and therefore the book must be written in an accessible style. Third, bioinformatics is a particularly rapidly moving field, challenging a book to be up-to-date. Below I give my opinions on these two volumes and how they address these challenges.

Methods in Molecular Biology: Bioinformatics is presented in two volumes with a total of 51 chapters. Although clearly structured, inevitably there are methods that might usefully be used (or read) together, but are presented in different volumes. For example, the chapters on Discovering sequence motifs and Prediction of regulatory motifs' occur in different volumes. Therefore, for many readers both volumes will be essential. The diversity of topics covered means that only a selection of chapters is likely to be of value to the majority of biologists. Therefore, these volumes are most likely to be of most value as an institutional purchase rather than for individuals.

The range and depth of topics covered in the 51 chapters is only feasible by drawing upon specialists for individual chapters. The authors are leading investigators writing about their areas of expertise; however, the chapters are written independently and therefore there is limited cross-referencing. Each chapter presents a particular method and is subdivided into an introduction, materials, methods and notes. The chapters are clearly laid out with useful figures including screen-shots of examples described in the text. The different authors have brought different styles to their chapters and this leads to differences in the level of detail offered and assumed background knowledge. Therefore, while I found some chapters easily accessible, other chapters were difficult to follow. Other readers, with different backgrounds, might well find the situation reversed.

The Methods in Molecular Biology style of a methods section with numbered steps (written out like a protocol) is difficult to adapt to bioinformatics, particularly since there are generally multiple analogous approaches available and the optimal approach may differ depending on the precise question. As such, many of the authors give descriptions of the required steps in general terms and then suggest particular software or websites that could be used. This has the advantage of retaining generality, but the drawback is that the novice may not immediately be able attempt some of the methods. For some chapters I found this generality a strength; for example, in the chapter on Genome annotation the authors opt for a broad definition of genome annotation (before going on to give specific instruction on how to use a number of genome browsers to view annotations) that greatly increases the value of this chapter. In other chapters I was frustrated by rather vague instructions.

Remaining current is a challenge for any methods book, but particularly so in a field moving as rapidly as bioinformatics. I found the majority of chapters to be up-to-date, but how long this will remain the case is difficult to judge. Many of the chapters refer readers to websites and to journals (for example, the database and web server issues of the journal Nucleic Acid Research) that complement the chapters and will increase the useful lifetime of the volumes. In summary, these volumes successfully cover the wide field of bioinformatics, providing many useful methods, the majority of which are accessible to the non-specialist. For most biologists who are occasional users of bioinformatics, these books will serve as a valuable reference and therefore may be most appropriate as an institutional purchase. For individuals' heavy involved in a particular area of bioinformatics, these volumes might be a valuable resource for learning about a wide range of methods, but may be too basic for the specialist.