Fan, XiaodanYuan, YuanLiu, Jun2015-03-132010Fan, Xiaodan, Yuan Yuan, and Jun S. Liu. 2010. “The EM Algorithm and the Rise of Computational Biology.” Statistical Science 25 (4) (November): 476–491. doi:10.1214/09-sts312.0883-4237http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:14169387In the past decade computational biology has grown from a cottage industry with a handful of researchers to an attractive interdisciplinary field, catching the attention and imagination of many quantitatively-minded scientists. Of interest to us is the key role played by the EM algorithm during this transformation. We survey the use of the EM algorithm in a few important computational biology problems surrounding the “central dogma” of molecular biology: from DNA to RNA and then to proteins. Topics of this article include sequence motif discovery, protein sequence alignment, population genetics, evolutionary models and mRNA expression microarray data analysis.en-USJournal Article2015-03-1310.1214/09-sts312