Book excerpt: The Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (PSB 2005) is an international, multidisciplinary conference for the presentation and discussion of current research in the theory and application of computational methods in problems of biological significance. This latest volume in the prestigious conference series contains the contributions of top researchers from the US, the Asia-Pacific region and around the world. Sections are devoted to databases, algorithms, interfaces, visualization, modeling and other computational methods, as applied to biological problems, with emphasis on applications in data-rich areas of molecular biology. The book is an essential source of ideas, discoveries and references for academics in biocomputing, bioinformatics researchers and computer scientists.