Bioinformatics in The Economist

Erich Schwarz writes "Bioinformatics has gone from being an esoteric sub-field to being a business. The Economist gives a useful overview, while warning 'Bioinformatics is not for the faint of heart...'"

Comments

Re:What I'd major in

[coloth]

this combination can be hard to come by

I guess there'll be a few with outright credentials, some more who are smart enough to wing it while they learn what they're missing, and a lot of people who contribute as part of a team.

If you haven't read Ship of Gold by Gary Kinder, about Tommy Thompson's life and eventual recovery of $1 billion in gold from the deep sea, I strongly recommend it, especially to any scientific or engineering-oriented person. Tommy's story is a case study in how to break new ground, think creatively, and form networks of expertise. It convinced me that credendials, and even past experience, may not be the best indicators of future success.

Re:Bioinformatics runs on Open Source

[glwtta]

Or go straight to bioperl.org, one of the absolute key projects for bioinformatics.

In case you are wondering, there is a biopython, biojava, biocorba, bioxml, biruby, etc. but perl is really where 90% of bioinformatics is done (simply because, in the end, all it is is text processing)