Foreword

I have known Kuo Ping for almost thirty years. He is very fond of science, especially in developing or employing novel technologies for biological investigations. He and I often share ideas and have worked on common scientific interests, including the project to study the early anti-cancer activity of the medicinal fungus Antrodia cinnamomea using Next- Generation Sequencing (NGS) to sequence and compare the transcriptomes of cancer cells treated with or without the extract of A. cinnamomea. This work led to the discovery that this medicinal fungus was able to globally collapse the miRNA system.

It is his never-resting mind that has provided him a motivation to start writing this book some years ago, while he was still working for Genome Institute of Singapore when NGS was starting to take shape. During that time, there was nowhere to find a book to introduce advanced sequencing technologies and the potential applications to either students or laymen. This book evolves from his previous work on paired-end ditag technology and has a strong association with NGS which can be considered as the most fascinating technology of the 21st century. I am glad to see him accomplish this hard task. This book seems to be a good textbook for graduate students and a handbook for researchers who are interested in sequencing and biotechnologies.

It is worth mentioning that Kuo Ping is a scientist with a strong passion for outdoor activities. We did some interesting, and sometimes funny, things together. Back in California, we spent some weekends fishing at Pacifica Pier for perch and crabs, and then barbecued and talked over beer in my backyard. Here in Taiwan, we often tour around his “secret gardens” where he grew trees and raised domestic fish in a pond. The most interesting outdoor experience was a trip to find fossil stones in a wild countryside, where we found forgotten creeks running through the hillside. We tied a very heavy fossil stone with rope and carried it with a bamboo stick across water streams, making loud laughter in the wild. I actually believe that his passion for outdoor activities has contributed to the completion of this useful book.