Acknowledgements

``I'm all in favour of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hand of fools. Let's start with typewriters.'' (Solomon Short)

I would first like to thank Thomas Pfisterer, Prof. Dr. Sándor Suhai, Dr. Bernd Drescher and Prof. Dr. Thomas Wetter for their invaluable input, hours of discussion, encouragement and a plethora of good ideas while working on this research project.

I also want to acknowledge and thank Dr. Gerald Nyakatura, Dr. Matthias Platzer and Dr. Uwe Menzel at the former genome sequencing group of the IMB Jena for their patience and numerous enhancement suggestions whilst explaining to me the mysteries of DNA and the shotgun sequencing process. Dr. Jacqueline Weber did the same for unravelling splicing in eukaryotic genomes. Needless to say that all errors that slipped into this thesis while writing about those topics are mine.

To Dr. Andrea Hörster I am most grateful for reading a preliminary version of this thesis very, very thoroughly.

I'd like to thank Prof. Dr. Werner E.G. Müller (University Mainz), Prof. Dr. Albert J. Driesel (VitiGen AG) and Prof. Dr. Jörn Bullerdiek (University Bremen) for kindly providing EST datasets

James Bonfield (now at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute) was most helpful for making mira compatible in output to the Staden package.

Without Volker Schmidt (DLR Lampoldshausen), I'd still sit - sometimes quite perplex - in front of the mysteries hidden within the depths of L^ATEX and PDF creation. The same applies for helpful souls in the USENET de.comp.text.tex newsgroup.

Last, but not certainly not least, Silke Mink supported me all along the last two years of this thesis, cheering me up and encouraging me to continue whenever I needed it.

Thanks a lot ...to all of you!