Is Bioinformatics for you
⚛️ This article is an excerpt from my talk with Heels and Tech
Bioinformatics is an interesting mesh of biology, computation and statistics. I like to call it the tech of biology, and rightly so, it is living up to the hype. Since the covid-19 pandemic, bioinformatics has being topping the market size and projections charts. It is a discipline with a lot of interest and investment from the government as well as academic and industry stakeholders. Given the high level of cash injections from multiple parties, you can expect rewarding renumeration packages if you are a skilled professional (Watch out for article on Salary expectations).
However, not everyone is cut out for interdisciplinary science. Just by judging from the building blocks of bioinformatics (biology + coding + stats), if you want to completely shy away from at least 2 of them for the rest of your life, I can already suggest that you, most likely, are not cut out for the technical demands of bioinformatics (Don’t quit the article yet 😎). There are also non-technical roles in bioinformatics.
Technically,
Jobs with upstream development descriptions demand more of your coding and biology skills since you are making first contact with the raw data. It is your job to ensure that you make the data ready for downstream analysis and applications through the development of custom pipelines (coding dependent). Understanding the research context (biology) is required here so you don’t ‘over-clean” the data. For example, if you are provided with a small RNA enrichment dataset (biology), you have to recalibrate the trimming section of your pipeline (coding), else you will trim the real dataset itself. A little bit of stats is kinda required since you will have to read/report the QC graphs, counts and p-values (if applicable).
While:
On the flipside, jobs with downstream development descriptions demand all three building blocks of bioinformatics. Here, you are literally going in circles between the research question (biology), solving the data (coding) and data interpretation (biology+stats). Your stats and coding proficiency will be demanded at every step of the way as you may (if not will) have to write custom solutions that are extremely specific to your data type.
N/B: Kindly read the tech stack in bioinformatics article
Let’s take a look at your personality;
Personally, I love this part. Partly because I think more than anything else, your kind of person determines your sweet spot in life, your chances of success and whether you will reach the highest heights of that spot.
In the contest of bioinformatics, it is not so easy to say you are right for bioinformatics just based on your personality. However, you may not fit into the industry but fit perfectly well into the academic landscape because of your personality. I have noted some of the top personality traits that I have seen over time.
| Trait | Academia | Industry |
|---|---|---|
| Teamwork | Except you are in a bioinformatics group, you may end up working alone most of the times | You are most likely working in or leading a team |
| Kind of research | For people who love doing basic/fundamental research | Big focus on application. |
| Research Diversity and flexibility | You are flexible with changing research methods and plans anytime | Little to no flexibility in research. |
| Impact-lovers | You may never see the impact of your research. (Except a pandemic hits again 😎) | You will see people’s life transformed by your codes before you die… literally |
| Communication | Freedom to speak on your scientific jargon | Storytelling is important. Or you become the evil corp. |
| Data or Software person* | biased towards data | biased towards software |
| Hards facts or hype | Hard facts with enough statistical significance | hype is the key to sales 😎 |
| Microbe, DNA or Drugs | Everything | Whatever sells. |
I am referring to your personal bias here. Both software and data are somehow intertwined in biology.
You can visit https://thehackbio.com/path-finder ↗ to conduct a fitness test in bioinformatics for yourself.
In summary,
Technical bioinformatics can be learned by anyone anywhere but your personality and interests can redefine your career choices, job description and where you will make the most impact and relevance. Look out for the next article on Career Salary breakdown in bioinformatics.
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Written by: Adewale Ogunleye