Q. As a biologist, what skills do I need to make the transition to
bioinformatics?
The fact is that many of the jobs
available CURRENTLY involve the design and implementation of programs and
systems for the storage, management and analysis of vast amounts of DNA
sequence data. Such positions require in-depth programming and relational database
skills which very few biologists possess, and so it is largely the
computational specialists who are filling these roles. This is not to say the
computer-savvy biologist doesn't play an important role. As the bioinformatics
field matures there will be a huge demand for outreach to the biological
community, as well as the need for individuals with the in-depth biological
background necessary to sift through gigabases of genomic sequence in search
of novel targets. It will be in these areas that biologists with the necessary
computational skills will find their niche.
A. Molecular biology
packages (GCG, BLAST etc),
Web and programming
skills including HTML, Perl, JAVA and C++,
Familiar with a
variety of operating systems (especially UNIX),
Relational database
skills such as SQL, Sybase or Oracle,
Statistics,
Structural biology
and modeling,
Mathematical
optimization,
Computer graphics
theory and linear algebra.
You will need to be able to readily pick up, use and understand the
tools and databases designed by computer programmers, and
To
communicate biological science requirements to core computer scientists.