What is Bioinformatics? A Career to choose from or not.

 

Let's talk Bioinformatics :-

There is a lot of confusion and doubts when we talk about or hear the term Bioinformatics. So, let’s talk about what is bioinformatics and how we can utilize it in carrying out research at very low cost. But before that we need to understand that there are so many do’s and don’ts are associated with it. So, lets dive in to understand Bioinformatics.

• At first bioinformatics was bought into existence to store huge amount of biological data which was being generated through various research and to print that information in a book wouldn’t have been a good idea as the data needs to be accessible by everyone around the globe. So, this was the first application of Bioinformatics that creations of dedicated databases to store biological data.
• Now, when the data is stored the next task is creation of different tools to perform the analysis on this huge library of biological data. Then different tools were created for the analysis and even now so many people are coming up with different tools to ease up the task of data analysis.
• Finally, our data is stored properly, we have got different tools for analysis so finally the most important task is to perform the analysis and generate the results in biologically meaningful manner.
• Now a days analysis of this data has become very important. Utilization of efficient tools, creation of a good analysis pipeline, addition of extra steps to refine your results Etc. There is always scope of improvement in Bioinformatics which I feel is a good thing.

• Availability of several command line tools; non-command line tools has made the process more efficient. In latest trends so many researchers are using R programming, Python, Machine Learning in their pipeline to make the process automated and be able to generate more graphs for visualization and different types of analysis.
• So, if you are comfortable with using command lines or programming languages then it will be an advantage for you. But if you are not comfortable with it then also not a problem there are so many non-command line available for use these days that you won’t be forced to learn programming.

The only problem with bioinformatics is we do not have any standard protocols just like we have it in-vitro. AS bioinformatics works on statistical models so it becomes very important for us to validate our results through in-vitro process. That’s why It becomes important for us to include some kind of statistical analysis in our research when we are going for research publication. It adds to the value of the results we have got.

Bioinformatics is not a separate field from life science, if anyone wants to start working in bioinformatics or want to learn bioinformatics so it is not difficult to get along with it. As the techniques used may be different but the basic concepts are same as we have learned in theory from life science.

I personally have only one suggestion for you all people aspiring to take up/ learn bioinformatics is that you start from the beginning that first you learn about different databases in bioinformatics, basic techniques used in Bioinformatics like 

• BLAST, 
• Phylogenetic analysis, 
• retrieval of proteins, 
• nucleotide sequences, 
• chemical structures 

From different databases. It will make your work in bioinformatics a lot easier as these are the things which you will be using almost everyday in your work.

I have met so many people during our workshops/training that participants come to attend the workshops with no prior knowledge about bioinformatics and aspect to learn during the course of 2 or 3 Days which is not a possible task for anybody. 

Even though we are conducting the workshops and trying to delivery everything to our participants in the easiest way possible but it has taken us also a long duration of time to learn these things.

So, we need to understand the importance of learning basics before going to any advanced level in bioinformatics. To get more information related to this field you can visit EdGene BioMed offering Best and Affordable Bioinformatics Training and workshop.