Aneth David
Bioinformatics has become an integral part of life science, from health research to zoology. Many scientists wishing to acquire bioinformatics skills struggle with where and how to start.
Here I provide a basic guideline groan complete beginner.
The first thing to consider is knowledge domains and where you excel. Essentially there are two knowledge areas in bioinformatics:
1. Biological (central dogma of molecular biology and related technologies such as PCR and sequencing)
2. Computational (Encompass Linux OS and programming languages skills)
Often
Assuming you are a biologist, learn bioinformatics in the following order:
1. Overview of what bioinformatics can do
2. Introduction to operating systems with focus on Linux OS
3. At least one programing language, such as Python
4. Data generation i.e. sequencing technologies and data formats
5. Information storage (biological databases) as well as access, analysis and retrieval (BLAST, genome browsers such as Ensembl)
5. Bioinformatics applications such as sequence alignment, phylogenetics, etc
6. Web-based and GUI applications (nice preamble to command line ones) such as galaxy, Qiime2 and EMBOSS
7. Learn R, a useful and cross-cutting data analysis tool.
There are many online resources to help one achieve this but also courses, virtual, in-person or hybrid are helpful.
Once you have basic skills editarhins and hackathons are great for hands on skills and practice.
Good thing is nowadays most bioinformatics resources are open source and free and datasets are freely accessible with many accompanying tutorials and even support communities for different tools. Options are unlimited with a proper guide (like this one) and commitment.
What have you found useful in learning bioinformatics? Please share.
Till next time, a bientôt!
