Hi,
I am a graduate (did masters) in Statistics. Now I am interested in bioinformatics. I do understand something of DNA /RNA seqences and gene expressions since I had bioinformatics courses during my degreee in statistics.I am interested to do some sort of bioinformatic analysis (using R and NCBI data) , I have plans to write papers based on the analysis.
The problem is I know very little about unknown stuffs in biological field or I can say bioinformatics field, but I really wanna do this, (Do not know where to start), . I want to use my statisticla knowledge. Is anyone up there to collaborate with me? or give me some tips, thanks I lot.
Shanj
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shanjida986 •
1 answer
By no means I want to de-motivate you with my comments here, however, please take it as a constructive feedback
I do understand something of DNA /RNA seqences and gene expressions since I had bioinformatics courses during my degreee in statistics.
well friend, this is not enough. People here are learning for years to understand and have some fundamental understanding of the underlying principles. The good news is, you too can.
I am interested to do some sort of bioinformatic analysis (using R and NCBI data) , I have plans to write papers based on the analysis.
We are no one to tell you what sort of bioinformatics analysis you should do, using whatever database. It is you who will decide this based on your understanding and interests. Papers!, well of course you can if you can develop something useful without re-inventing the wheel.
All the best.
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Do you have any groups local to you? In my experience, groups are always happy to recruit someone with formal statistics training. A local group would be able to supply you with problems they're having and that'll be much more efficient than trying to do some sort of online collaboration.
I second this suggestion. Local folks will also be more inclined to spend the time and explain the underlying biology to you. Both of you will ultimately benefit from such a collaboration.
IMO, there is not much biology in bioinformatics. Try to pick up programming skills (java, python, perl, awk, sed..not in any order or not in any preference, for those who are offended by the list) and some database (mysql, oracle, post gresql) skills. In addition pick up some high throughput computing skills (AWS, Azure, cluster etc) For better idea, look at the job requirement profiles for bioinformatics. With your statistics skills and informatics skills, you can get into bioinformatics.
Really? Are you using/creating algorithms/tools in vacuum without any consideration of what is happening in real biology?
I guess you are living in a bubble. In bioinformatics industry, most of the bioinformatics project do not even have SME in biology. Look at the requirements of most of the bioinformatics jobs or interview questions.Most of these positions require programmers /developers with or without biology knowledge. While most of the programmers and / or statisticians make into bioinformatics companies, biologists have tough time to secure bioinformatics position with few corner cases.
OP is a statistician and if he wants to learn some thing new to be a bioiformatician, IMO, programming, data base skills are more helpful than biology and will help OP in near future.
Those sound more like "data science" positions than "bioinformatics", even if they're advertised as the latter.
I imagine this is very much position-dependent. At least at the institute I'm at the bioinformaticians without much of a biology background have a pretty rough time. If the tasks are "program something to do X" or "munge things so Y works" then you don't need much biology. However, at least the folks I work with tend to get requests like, "we're trying to figure out X, what sequencing and exact analysis would we need", or "here's some data, write a Nature paper" sorts of requests. You kind of need a good understanding of biology to handle those sorts of requests.