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

What I'd major in

[SteweyGriffin]

If I had to do it again, I'd definitely choose biology or bioengineering or something related.

It seems as most everything in computer has "been done", and biology/chemisty/biochemical engineering seems to be where all the fun & excitement is these days.

Anyone else agree? Just curious.

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:What I'd major in

[GuySmiley]

As a molecular biologist, I steer interns out of biology. Blend bio with any other discipline. You will spend your entire life justifying the 90% of experiments that fail, justifying your existance to get grants, etc. Bio-business, bio,-programming, bio-sales, bio-anything. Lab rats at the bench make no money, get zero respect, get zero creative control and are this generation's ditch diggers.

A decade of scientific failures is indescribably difficult to explain, but it is ungratifying. I have been taking Linux/SQL classes for the last few years trying to steer into the digital world, and thus mine and slashdot's interests are now intersecting.

Yes, having interesting work can only go so far. You still have Senior management flushing the cool stuff you invent down the toilet or left on the vine to rot. At the end of the day , you still have a pile of bills to pay.

looking for meaningful work in MPLS fleabag-at-covat-dot-net

Re:What I'd major in

[t0rnt0pieces]

As a molecular biologist, I steer interns out of biology. Blend bio with any other discipline. You will spend your entire life justifying the 90% of experiments that fail, justifying your existance to get grants, etc. Bio-business, bio,-programming, bio-sales, bio-anything. Lab rats at the bench make no money, get zero respect, get zero creative control and are this generation's ditch diggers.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Here's something to chew on. Do you need a bio degree to do bio-sales, bio-business, bio-programming, etc? Most likely not. Biologists generally know nothing about business, sales, or programming, so they can't get jobs in these fields.

I work as a lab tech and I agree that they are ditch diggers. I actually did go to grad school for a bit, I pretty much hated it. It's very unsatisfying. At least if you program you can design something *useful* that *works* and feel like you've accomplished something. Biologists go months without accomplishing anything, and the work is dirty. Who wants to be in a lab for the rest of their lives? Even the PhD's have it really tough. No one hires PhD's, they're overqualified. Most of them end up working long hours for years as post-docs making $30,000.

Re:What I'd major in

[Zork the Almighty]

I'm a graduate student in mathematics and I find biology "hard". It's somewhat straightforwards, but there's too much crap to memorize. But all the biology people I know think math is hard, so it's obviously a matter of personal attributes and taste as to what is "hard" or "easy".

The submitter is correct

[SteweyGriffin]

Bioinformatics is really where it's out. Just glancing around at various newspapers, it's readily apparent where the future is heading.

Is it really what we want/need as humans? I'm not sure. But I for one won't wager a guess until there's more research done in the area, so I say let's explore it more before we defame it conclusively or support it as a technological breakthrough.

Some other recent news items:
Nabda, Unesco Collaborate in Bioinformatics Training
AllAfrica.com,Africa-05 Dec 2002
... Development Agency (NABDA) and the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural
Organisation (UNESCO), penultimate Tuesday held a two-day Bioinformatics ...

Bioinformatics ahead for Danville
Danville Register and Bee,VA-30 Nov 2002
... Developing these plants will involve both horticulture and bioinformatics and will
be one major focus of Danville's Institute for Advanced Learning and Research ...

The race to computerise biology
Economist (subscription),UK-12 Dec 2002
Welcome to the world of bioinformatics--a branch of computing concerned
with the acquisition, storage and analysis of biological data. ...

Observing Proteins And Cells In The Wild: Quantum Dots May ...
Science Daily-13 Dec 2002
... Today it is internationally renowned for research and graduate education
in the biomedical sciences, chemistry, bioinformatics and physics. ...

Bioinformatics runs on Open Source

[dan dan the dna man]

So don't sit there saying its hard to get into :)

Run, don't walk to bioinformatics.org and contribute!

The first O'Reilly bioinformatics conference rocked. Shame I wont make the next one in San Diego - I get to go to Adelaide for the ISMB in June instead :)

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)

Viewpoints

[VoidEngineer]

Hmmm. Seems like it would be easier to say that everything which has been done in computer science has 'been done', whereas everything that hasn't been done in computer science, 'hasn't'.

Seriously, though, you may be mis-categorizing your subjects. Look at computers as computational entities, rather than disk drives, monitors, and so forth. In that case, an optical computer or a biocomputer operates on many of the same systems priciple as a 'digital computer', and there is therefore much to be done in the field of computer science.

Absolutely. Optical computing is getting some great advances in Holographic Video at the MIT Spatial Imaging Group. And chemical computing is advancing nicely in Carbohydrate Chips at the University of Chicago.

For my money, I'd bet on optical video cubes, 3D television, and biochips in the future... which are all applications of computer technology. Remember, 'computer' use to refer to the job title of a person.

For my money, I think that the future has got SnowCrash, Cryptonomicon, Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and Johnny Mnemonic written all over it (and maybe a bit of Jurassic Park.

bad idea

[g4dget]

Don't pick what is fashionable, pick what you are interested in. The biological sciences are very different from computer science and engineering. Chances are that if you weren't interested in the biological sciences when you picked your major, you still wouldn't be today.

What you can do, however, is apply computer science and engineering skills to biological problems: work as a developer or engineer for a biotech company or lab.

My $.02 on biological sciences

[t0rnt0pieces]

I graduated from Rutgers U. (decent NJ state school) in May 2000 with a bachelor's in biology. Back when I decided to major in bio, I really enjoyed studying the field, and (high school) teachers were telling me that molecular biology was the fastest growing job sector. So by the time senior year came around I began looking for a "real" job. I checked all the papers, company websites, monster, etc. and realized that there really are NO good jobs out there for biologists. There are a few bioinformatics jobs, but guess what, you need a CS degree for them, not biology. I ended up getting a lousy job as a lab technician paying around $14 an hour (which took several months to find, btw, and this was when the economy was booming), and I'm extremely unhappy. I've completely lost any love I had for this field. Say what you want about money not being the most important thing, but when you can't afford to do anything you want, your life gets miserable very fast, I don't care how great your job is. Biology jobs typically have zero mobility and are extremely underpaid. You think there's a flood of people graduating from CS? Biology is far worse. My CS classes have about 20-30 people in them. My bio classes had hundreds.

Just recently I decided to go back to Rutgers for a second bachelor's in computer science. Not only are the job prospects better and higher-paying (even considering the dot-com collapse), I've always enjoyed working with computers and my grades are actually far better (although I was never a bad student). I'm actually having fun in my CS classes, I never had fun in bio. The classes were more like a chore. Another horrible thing about biology is that you really don't learn anything practical in college, you just memorize facts. At least with computer science you learn many useful tools to make you a competant programmer, which is actually a marketable skill. Nothing about biology is marketable. I highly discourage anyone from majoring in Bio unless they seriously, seriously love it and intend to get a PhD and devote their lives to research without regards to trivial things like money and job prospects.

Don�t forget Chemoinformatics

[Wdi]

While there is a real hype about bioinformatics, do not forget its sister discipline, chemoinformatics. Chemoinformatics is more concerned about handling chemical structures rather than genomes (but the boundaries are not that clear, and companies such as Accelrys 8cited in the article] are more a chemoinformatics than a bioinformatics company).

An interesting overview about CI can be found at Nature.

Still, you need dedication for this job: A Ph.D. in chemistry plus solid computer science knowledge is still the norm. But those few who qualify are really sought after.

Disclosure: I am the Director of Chemoinformatics at start-up ChemCodes (www.chemcodes.com), so I know what I am talking about.

Postdocs Jobs in bioinformatics and proteomics

[goombah99]

Want a high paying job in bioinformatics? there are several high paying postdoctoral positions ($59000 to $75000 starting salary) available at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

goto www.lanl.gov and click on the 'jobs' tab then the postdoc link.

here is one example:

Summary: Postdoctoral Positions in Protein Bioinformatics and Structural Genomics: The Bioscience Division (B-2 Group) is seeking 2-3 highly motivated researchers for immediate openings to work with our interdisciplinary team of Bioinformatics and Structural Biology. Research activities will focus on the development and application of methods in Functional and Structural Genomics, including: 1) inference of function in proteins based upon structural and sequence information; 2) prediction of protein structure, protein binding, ligands, and active sites using both ab initio approaches and experimental information; 3) identification of signatures of pathenogenosis; 4) annotation and analysis of selected genomes; and 5) creation and curation of annotated protein databases.

Required Skills:Experience in at least 2 of the following areas is required (more than two areas of experience is highly desirable):

• Protein structure modeling or protein-ligand analysis or other related modeling
• Background in molecular biology, or microbial pathogenesis, or related fields
• Experience with the common sequence analysis tools for Blast search, sequence alignment, phylogenetic analysis, etc.
• Drug design, or protein design or protein structure predictions or docking
• Functional annotation of putative genes based on literature analysis
• Curation of biological databases and web programming

Desired Skills:Knowledge of one computer programming language (e.g., Perl, Python, FORTRAN, C++). Use of common molecular graphics tools such as Pymol, Xtal. Research in genomic sequence analysis or protein structure. Familiarity with SQL databases, unix, and XML is useful. Education:A Ph.D completed within the last 5 years or soon to be completed is required. Notes to Applicants:Starting salaries range from $59,300 to $67,300. For further technical information about the position and the project, contact Charlie Strauss at cems@lanl.gov (505-665-5838), or Murray Wolinsky at murray@lanl.gov (505-665-0952).
Candidates may be considered for a Director's Fellowship and outstanding candidates may be considered for the prestigious J. Robert Oppenheimer, Richard P. Feynman or Frederick Reines Fellowships. Please see Special Postdoctoral Fellowships for further details.

For general information refer to the Postdoctoral Program page.