Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

9.1 The Growth of Bioperl

The
practice of freely distributing Perl software for bioinformatics over
the Internet began around 1992. Gradually, Perl became more and more
popular for biology applications.[1] The release of Perl Version 5 and its support for
object-oriented programming accelerated the development of reusable
modules for biology at many research centers around the world. The
large-scale genome sequencing efforts, then underway, provided much
of the impetus, as well as the talent and funding, for these efforts.
The Bioperl project, officially organized in 1995, coalesced around
one of these bioinformatics research groups that was doing a good job
of organizing the collective volunteer effort such collaborative
projects require. More information, including a short history and
list of contributors, can be found at the Bioperl site http://bioperl.org. The Bioperl web site is
frequently being updated and improved, and is the primary source of
Bioperl code and documentation.

[1] See, for example,
the article "How Perl Saved the Human Genome
Project" by Lincoln Stein at http://bioperl.org/GetStarted/tpj_ls_biol.

Today, the Bioperl project has grown to a point where it is both
useful enough, and well enough documented, that it is a must for Perl
programming in bioinformatics. The documentation includes a program
bptutorial.pl that comes with Bioperl, which
explains and demonstrates several areas of the project (more on that
later in this chapter).