INTRODUCTION 21
Finally, Chapter 11 summarizes key findings about opportunities and barriers to progress at the
interface and provides recommendations for priority areas of research, tools, education, and resources
that will propel progress at the interface.
Appendix A is a reprint of a chapter from a 1995 NRC report entitled Calculating the Secrets of Life.
The chapter, “The Secrets of Life: A Mathematician’s Introduction to Molecular Biology,” is essentially
a short primer on the fundamentals of molecular biology for nonbiologists. Appendix B lists some of the
research challenges in computational biology discussed in other reports. Short biographies of commit-
tee members, staff, and the review coordinator are given in Appendix C.
Throughout this report, examples of relevant work are provided quite liberally where they are
relevant to the topic at hand. The reader should note that these examples have generally been selected
to illustrate the breadth of the topic in question, rather than to identify the most important areas of
activity. That is, the appropriate spirit in which to view these examples is “letting a thousand flowers
bloom,” rather than one of “finding the prettiest flowers.”