<p>I haven't had any kind of real exposure to this field, but am beginning to develop an interest in it. So far, I've had 3 years wet lab experience in a neuroscience lab. Am planning to apply mstp.</p>
<p>Right now, I'm planning to take one year off to work as a lab tech regardless of which field I decide on. So perhaps I can do a lab tech in a bioinformatics lab?</p>
<p>I've always liked math and at times, wish my biology major had more of it. What should I do to learn more about it?</p>
<p>Learn more about math or bioinformatics? What sort of bioinformatics topics interest you? It’s a rather broad field.</p>
<p>If you’re in a neuroscience lab (and have taken the courses to go with it), you’re in great shape. Try to squeeze in a computer science class or two and molecular biology before you graduate. Add genetics, and you’re golden. If you’re interested in the neuroscience angle of bioinformatics, there are many neuroscience PhD programs with a computational biology track.</p>
<p>Economic times are tough, so it will be hard to find a job in the field. The pharmaceutical industry takes lots of computational biologists; however, they usually have advanced degrees. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to explore that option.</p>
<p>Learn how to thoroughly use the NCBI website - the purpose of each database, how to manipulate the parameters, understanding how to query properly, etc. Pubmed some papers on your favorite disease/topic and see what kind of bioinformatics/high throughput approaches are being used. Read up on the different high throughput assays and really understand how they work (subtle differences can answer different questions or affect what kind of answers you get). </p>
<p>It would be useful to learn how to write in different programming languages as well as knowing how to use multiple platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux). This may be dependent on what kind of work you want to do, but the people I know in bioinformatics will write their own programs to look for certain things or even just plug ins for existing programs.</p>
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[QUOTE=Momwaitingfornew]
If you’re in a neuroscience lab (and have taken the courses to go with it), you’re in great shape. Try to squeeze in a computer science class or two and molecular biology before you graduate. Add genetics, and you’re golden. If you’re interested in the neuroscience angle of bioinformatics, there are many neuroscience PhD programs with a computational biology track.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Depending on what Ookla wants to do, a CS course or two isn’t really going to go very far. Math is at least as important as CS. I’d add math through multivariable calculus and linear algebra, a calculus-based prob/stats class, and differential equations or vector calculus (if that’s not covered in Calc 2) wouldn’t hurt, either. Programming is definitely important, though. It’s essential to have strong programming abilities.</p>
<p>Here’s what the CMU/Pitt program suggests as background before applying to their computational biology program: [Joint</a> CMU-Pitt Ph.D. Program in Computational Biology](<a href=“http://www.compbio.cmu.edu/Admissions/prerequisites.html]Joint”>http://www.compbio.cmu.edu/Admissions/prerequisites.html)</p>
<p>But again, the word “bioinformatics” can mean a lot of different things. If you just want to know how to use the NCBI tools, then just read “Bioinformatics for Dummies”. If you want to do theoretical/computational neuroscience, you’re going to need a lot of math/CS preparation.</p>
<p>Here are some books that cover a few different sides of computational biology:</p>
<p>[Amazon.com:</a> Systems Biology: Volume I: Genomics (Series in Systems Biology): Isidore Rigoutsos, Gregory Stephanopoulos: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Biology-I-Genomics/dp/0195300815/ref=wl_it_dp?ie=UTF8&coliid=I2XTP7X0QA1BOY&colid=2AMQM19ZVYNZ1]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Biology-I-Genomics/dp/0195300815/ref=wl_it_dp?ie=UTF8&coliid=I2XTP7X0QA1BOY&colid=2AMQM19ZVYNZ1)</p>
<p>[Amazon.com:</a> Bioinformatics For Dummies (For Dummies (Math & Science)): Jean-Michel Claverie Ph. D., Cedric Notredame Ph.D.: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Bioinformatics-Dummies-Math-Science/dp/0470089857/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242662201&sr=8-1]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Bioinformatics-Dummies-Math-Science/dp/0470089857/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242662201&sr=8-1)</p>
<p>[Amazon.com:</a> Understanding Bioinformatics: Marketa Zvelebil, Jeremy Baum: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Bioinformatics-Marketa-Zvelebil/dp/0815340249/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242662201&sr=8-2]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Bioinformatics-Marketa-Zvelebil/dp/0815340249/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242662201&sr=8-2)</p>
<p>[Amazon.com:</a> Introduction to Bioinformatics: Arthur Lesk: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Bioinformatics-Arthur-Lesk/dp/0199208042/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242662201&sr=8-4]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Bioinformatics-Arthur-Lesk/dp/0199208042/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242662201&sr=8-4)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Theoretical-Neuroscience-Computational-Mathematical-Modeling/dp/0262541858/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242662790&sr=8-1[/url]”>http://www.amazon.com/Theoretical-Neuroscience-Computational-Mathematical-Modeling/dp/0262541858/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242662790&sr=8-1</a></p>
<p>Some journal titles: PLoS Computational Biology, Molecular Systems Biology, Genome Research, BMC Bioinformatics, BMC Genomics, Bioinformatics, Journal of Computational Biology.</p>
<p>thanks Sarbruis, that really helps.</p>
<p>another question:
I understand bioinformaticists work primarily on computers analyzing data generated by other people, but are there times when they need to briefly switch to wet lab work to generate their own data?</p>
<p>It depends on the lab, but I imagine quite a few labs do that sort of thing. There are some labs that have wet/dry areas to do just that.</p>
<p>good institutions are always going to have some sort of experimental validation of computational results. read: wet and dry research.</p>
<p>there are really only a few institutions worth going to for bioinformatics:</p>
<p>columbia
stanford
princeton
harvard
mit
maybe uwashington</p>
<ul>
<li>berkeley</li>
</ul>
<p>uw is definitely on the list- they have a very good evolutionary genomics program</p>