Biomolecular Demographics and Systematics

Molecular systematics, organising and mapping of molecules, would have been very difficult a decade ago. It became possible because of the meeting of two factors - the availability of a vast amount of sequence and structural data of biomolecules and properties of organic chemicals and the dramatically increased computing power and computational algorithms developed to use such computing power. This relatively new area of research has spawned a new discipline by bringing in biologists, computational scientists, and mathematicians to answer key questions that cannot be obtained by any other approach. This unique book summarises the field of biomolecular systematics and demographics, over the past two decades, in organising and mapping (for visualisation) protein space, nucleic acid space, and small molecule space in terms of their sequences and structures. Organising and mapping (demographics) these spaces provides a global view of each system and helps understand the interrelationship of components of the systems and, often, the evolution of the system (systematics). Understanding such global organisation and maps provides a systems view and perspective for studying individual molecules or family of molecules. Such view and perspective can help discover new paradigms for classification and evolution of protein structures, protein sequences, whole genome sequences, and many other applications. The book has many visual presentations to help convey the global features of the space representing each biomolecular population. It also explains the mathematical methods used to group molecular population distribution and build the maps with clear and easy to follow numerical and pictorial examples for intuitive understanding of the methods for non-mathematicians. The book is aimed at upperclass undergraduates, graduate students, post graduates, and practicing scientists who are interested in obtaining global views of the molecular systems that are the core of all living organisms. This could be protein, nucleic acid, or small molecules that interact with biomolecules, to help them in studying the structure, function, and evolution of proteins and nucleic acids, and their interacting small chemicals.