What are guided tours?

The text, Discovering Genomics, Proteomics, and Bioinformatics provides many "Discovery Questions", often grouped in series. These generally direct you to web sites where you seek out some information or process some sequence or just take a look around. The sites are all given at the text's web site, along with specific sequences used by the questions.

Why are guided tours?

The sites visited by the tours were not made for display or education but rather are sites commonly used in research. The guided tours let you experience the process of discovery in a similar way as the person who first found the path. In this way you learn what bioinformatics is able to do as well as its limitations.

Why doesn't Tour X work?

Malcolm Campbell and Laurie Heyer (the authors of the text) have tried to do something very difficult: guide an unknown person in the distant future through a series of web pages. They don't know you, your background, which things in the page will jump out at you and which will blend into the haze. They have no control over the sites, which may at any moment decide to change their format or cease to exist altogether. I will provide hints and patches as part of the notes, but you need to provide patience and some resourcefulness to get to the ultimate goal.