Forum:Skills & qualities required to be a Bioinformatician

Question

[koushikayaluri]

I am currently a student pursuing Bachelors in Bioinformatics and I want my career to be in bioinformatics related field so please kindly suggest me the qualities,skills,languages & tools to become a good bioinformatician in future.

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

Duplicate of : Advice For Newcomers To The Bioinformatics Field

Answer 1

[WouterDeCoster]

No skills required, you just have to be unreasonable persistent. Find a language you like and practice. Every day. And suck until you don't.

[venu]

@wouter: Do you have a list of blogs you frequently visit? I often find some interesting stuff from you.

[WouterDeCoster]

You can find a number of interesting blogs collected by the Biostar aggregator here. I also get many interesting post by following interesting people on Twitter.

A selection of blogs I have in my RSS feed, in no particular order:
WHAT YOU'RE DOING IS RATHER DESPERATE
Mike Love’s blog
genetics for fun
Ewan's blog: Bioinformatician at Large
In between lines of code
Heng Li's blog
The Molecular Ecologist
Living in an Ivory Basement
Blasted Bioinformatics!?
Enseqlopedia
Omics! Omics!
YOKOFAKUN
Next-Gen Sequencing
OPINIOMICS
Bits of DNA
Genome Spot
MacArthur Lab
Blue Collar Bioinformatics
Buried Treasure
Simpson Lab
Bits of Bioinformatics
Loman Lab
Getting Genetics Done
Bioinformatics Bits and Pieces
BEANBAG GENOMICS

My own blog Gigabase or gigabyte contains just one post (more to follow)

(I use Inoreader for following RSS feeds)

Answer 2

[jerry]

Good bioinformaticians have a deep understanding of biology and genomics and are able to use this to either interpret data and uncover insights (for more data-science-driven bioinformaticians) or to develop good tools (for more software-oriented bioinformaticians).

The level of programming skills required is not that high, compared to a software engineer at a tech company - just pick a language like R or Python and stick with it.

Over time, you will learn to use existing bioinformatics tools to get the job done, instead of writing your own code/scripts each time.

Answer 3

[Bioaln]

There are approx. 5 levels of bioinformatics.

1.) running ~blast etc. 2.) automating ~blast etc. 3.) Custom Py|R scripts 4.) Larger workflows with some customizations 5.) Proper algorithms - for this you need proper knowledge of CompSci, discrete math, biophysics ... + distributed computing probably.

Climb up!

[Devon Ryan]

There are vanishingly few bioinformatics tools that use distributed computing.

Answer 4

[g.corey.shan]

This post might help: https://shanguangyu.com/articles/two-basic-skills-for-bioinformatician/

Answer 5

[ashishbansal12300]

The best bioinformatician are:

1. Highly Skilled - programming skills, experience with the biological software and tools.

   The biological data won’t illuminate much if the scientist analysing it doesn’t possess practical programming skills, experience with the biological software and tools and a thorough understanding of basic biological stuff. A solid background in mathematics and statistics is also an indispensable trait.

2. Insight - Real vision, robust understanding and deep insight.

   In order to hire the best bioinformatics and computational biologist scientist for your needs, it is always recommended and mostly practiced by the recruiters, to ask each contender to write and develop a sample script/presentation based on a specific set of data you provide. Then, explore the approaches used to deal with data provided and pick up those candidates who convey real vision, robust understanding and deep insight.

3. Energetic – Curiosity to explore

   Mostly natural curiosity and enthusiasm for solving big biological problems coupled with an ability to transform data into a scientific stories may place one candidate above the rest. In addition to achieve that, the bioinformatician should be agile enough to quickly modify their methods to suit changes within a particular research.

4. Researcher – Publications

   Look for someone who has a keen sense and understanding of concern biological problems. You can judge it by looking at previously published papers and data. It is always recommended to have a look at GitHub and other repository for codes written by her/him.

5. Impressive communicator - Insight that can’t be expressed is worthless.

   Good bioinformatics scientists are able to uncover biological patterns and are willing to explain those patterns in clear and helpful ways through thoughtful and open communication. In other words, they should must have good scientific writing skills. A computational biologis/bioinformatician should know how to present the data and tell a scientific story through numbers/images.