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©Oxford University Press

Linguistic approaches to biological sequences

David B. Searls

Bioinformatics Group, SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals 709 Swedeland Road, PO Box 1539, King of Prussia. PA 19406. USA

Biologists have long made use of linguistic metaphors in describing and naming cellular processes involving nucleic acid and protein sequences. Indeed, it is very natural to view the genetic ‘text’ and its sequential transliterations in these terms. However, a metaphor is not a tool, and it is necessary to ask whether the techniques used in analyzing other kinds of languages, such as human and computer languages, can in fact be of any use in tackling problems in molecular biology. This paper reviews the work of the author and others in applying the methods of computational linguistics to biological sequences.

Received on November 28, 1996; revised on February 2, 1997; accepted on February 2, 1997

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