Artificial immune systems in bioinformatics

Abstract

Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) represent one of the most recent and promising approaches in the branch of bio-inspired techniques. Although this open field of research is still in its infancy, several relevant results have been achieved by using the AIS paradigm in demanding tasks such as the ones coming from computational biology and biochemistry. The chapter will show how AIS have been successfully used in computational biology problems and will give readers further hints about possible implementations in unexplored fields. The main goal of the contribution lays in providing both theoretical foundations and hands-on experience that allow researchers to figure out novel applications of AIS in bioinformatics and, at the same time, providing researchers with necessary insights for implementation in daily research. The contribution will be organised in 5 sections. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.